Cassidy wants Widnes to rediscover drive in defence

Widnes assistant coach Mick Cassidy wants to see a reaction to last week’s defeat, when the Vikings travel to Hull Kingston Rovers on Sunday.

The Vikings lost 25-12 at home to Rovers’ local rivals Hull FC last Thursday, and Cassidy felt that his team didn’t manage the game as skilfully as they should have done.

“I think the drive for our game on Sunday was last week’s defeat, as we didn’t handle that game very well,” he said.

“We expected our performance to be better, especially because we were at home. We know we can start games well, but we now need to carry the performance over the full 80 minutes.

“Defence is definitely going to be the key this week, and looking back at the footage from the Hull game, we knew that the ruck was just too quick.

“We didn’t control the first two tackles and we didn’t put enough pressure on the kicker, so they are the areas that we’ve been looking at to improve this weekend.”

Cassidy expects Rovers to offer plenty of threat in attack, though it looks as though key man Terry Campese may now be missing for the clash.

“We watched them the last couple of weeks, and they are a good and very skillful team,” Cassidy added.

“They are led by two decent half backs in Terry Campese and Albert Kelly and have the ability to score tries.

“However, they have leaked a few points in the last couple of weeks so we’ll be looking to put them under a little bit of pressure and hope we can come away with the two points.”