Widnes Vikings move to the brink of securing their Super League
Rhys Hanbury helped Widnes Vikings move to the brink of securing their Super League status with four tries in his side's 46-4 win at Wakefield.
The Vikings produced a clinical performance to secure a fourth win from five matches in the Super 8s and leave Wakefield looking at the million-pound play-off tie as their most likely way of preserving their top-flight status.
The Wildcats had been competitive in their previous four Super 8s fixtures but they were no match for a superbly-organised Widnes side that dominated from start to finish. They had kept their line intact throughout the second half of their 56-12 win at Bradford last Sunday and it took Wakefield 53 minutes to find a chink in their armour.
The writing was on the wall for the home side as early as the third minute when the full-back Kevin Locke pulled off a flying tackle to prevent his opposite number Hanbury from opening the scoring. Danny Tickle then lost the ball going over the line and it was no surprise when Widnes went in front, as their captain Kevin Brown got Charly Runciman through a hole in the Wildcats and Lloyd White was in support to touch down.
A couple of back-to-back penalties enabled Wakefield to apply some pressure to the Widnes defensive line but they rarely looked capable of breaching it.
The Vikings looked especially threatening down their left channel where a sublime handling move involving Runciman and Patrick Ah Van brought Hanbury his first try.
The full-back punished a handling error by Jacob Miller to add a second and Aaron Heremaia finished off a clean break by White for the visitors’ fourth try. Tickle’s third goal made it 22-0 at half-time and Widnes strengthened their grip two minutes into the second half when Hanbury raced onto Brown’s grubber kick to complete his hat-trick, shortly before Brown jinked his way over for a solo try, with Tickle kicking a fifth goal to make it 34-0.
Wakefield finally stemmed the tide when Bill Tupou, easily their best player, freed Lee Smith with a delicate one-handed pass and, although he was brought down by a scrambling Brown, Smith forced his way over shortly afterwards for a consolation try.
It did little to disrupt the Vikings’ rhythm, however, as they continued to torment the fragile home defence.
Hanbury went over for his fourth try on the hour after Chris Dean had snapped up a kick over the defence from Wakefield’s scrum-half, Tim Smith, before Paddy Flynn went through some shoddy tackling to score the 100th try of his career.
With Tickle off the field, Ah Van took over the goalkicking and added the last two conversions.
