Widnes Vikings head coach John Kear believes his players need to get out of the hole they currently find themselves in, after they fell to a 36-12 defeat at Whitehaven on Sunday afternoon.
The Vikings were second best in Cumbria as Haven picked up their sixth win of the season to move within two points of Kear’s squad in the Betfred Championship table.
Sunday’s result is the Vikings’ second defeat in as many weeks, and Kear insists swift improvements must be made if his players want to salvage their play-off challenge.
Speaking post-match, he said: “I’m very, very disappointed, and I think the team are as well. We just feels like we haven’t done ourselves justice.
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“What we’ve been trying to do throughout the season is build resilience and toughness, and that’s exactly what we didn’t demonstrate today. We started well, completed seven of the first eight sets and went six points up, then as soon as we faced adversity, we just fell into a hole.
“That’s very worrying. We really do need to look at that and attempt to address it, because there’s another tough game in Cumbria next week.
“We’re at a halfway point and we’ve got a 50% record, which I don’t think is good enough. There’s two ways this can go – we can either go on an upward curve, or we can just collapse and fall into a hole.
“On the basis of today it might be the latter, but it’s my job to make sure it’s the former.”
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Kear also delivered a message to the Vikings supporters, who again turned out in their numbers and made the trip to Whitehaven.
“They were great. They’ve come here, they’ve stuck by [the players]. It’s a long way in weather like this. I’d like to thank them for doing that,” he added.
“During the season, it doesn’t always go on an upward curve. Sometimes you have bumps and bruises in the road and that’s what we’re experiencing at the minute.
“We’re going through a tough period, no doubt about that, so we’ve got to attempt to rectify it.”
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