Jon Grayshon shows he will be an asset for Vikings (From Runcorn and Widnes World)

Jon Grayshon shows he will be an asset for Vikings

10:04am Thursday 18th June 2009

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Widnes Vikings 46 Featherstone Rovers 22 EIGHT tries from different scorers was indicative of a fine team effort from Widnes as they downed Rovers.

Among those to get their name on the sheet was debutant forward Jon Grayshon who did enough to suggest he will be a useful asset during his loan stint from Harlequins.

Indeed the whole Widnes pack showed the sort of aggressive defence which coach Paul Cullen has been looking for.

Still there is plenty of room for improvement for the Vikings. They started poorly with a series of errors gifting Rovers field position.

However, robust tackling kept the visitors at bay and once Widnes started to find some fluency with ball in hand, the Yorkshiremen had no answer.

Winger Kevin Penny was first to cross the whitewash, sauntering in on the overlap after good work by James Webster and Craig Hall.

Featherstone's indiscipline around the tackle area saw the penalty count start to go against them and the inevitable sin-binning came on 16 minutes when ex-Viking Andy Kirk was shown the yellow card.

Six minutes later, Grayshon cut a good angle 30 metres out and held off a couple of challenges to gallop over, giraffe-like, from 30 metres.

And Kirk was still cooling his heels when Iain Morrison crashed in from a Webster pass to make it 16-0.

Webster turned from provider to finisher on the half hour as his show-and-go allowed him to slice through from close range and just before the interval he returned to his more usual role to put Gavin Dodd in after the fullback timed his run perfectly to score from 10 metres out.

A half-time score of 28-0 suggested a rout might be in the offing but Rovers showed some spirit after the break.

Rovers went further behind on 43 minutes as Mark Smith went through from dummy-half to score at the posts, but hit back with tries through Kirk and Tommy Haughey.

Prop Stuart Dickens added both conversions for Fev to make it 34-12 but normal service was resumed on 61 minutes when Toa Kohe-Love danced over for the Vikings.

Wingers Dean Gaskell and Jon Steel traded late tries to complete the try scoring with the Vikings' on loan centre Hall finishing with seven conversions.

Widnes: Dodd (1t); Gaskell (1t), Kohe-Love (1t), Hall (7g), Penny (1t); Thackeray, Webster (1t); Gannon, Smith (1t), Pickersgill, Fletcher, Grayshon (1t), Morrison (1t). Subs: Varkulis, Doran, Hartley, Kavanagh.

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