Betts slams “disgraceful” performance

Denis Betts vented his fury after Widnes were thumped 40-0 at Huddersfield on Friday.

The home side dominated from start to finish and Betts described his team’s performance as “disgraceful”.

“I was embarrassed by the team’s effort and skill,” he said. “We had chances in the first couple of sets and dropped the ball and bombed 18 points.

“We then ran out of energy on the back of our lack of completion. We gave them about 28 extra tackles.

“If you don’t play with the ball, you are always going to be on the back foot and we looked like a side that had lost all direction. There was no cohesion in our attack because we hadn’t any ball.

“”We know we’re in the Middle 8s and we’ve got to stick together.

“We’ve got to play better than that, it was atrocious. I’ve got to look at myself and my staff and see what if we have prepared well enough.

“I’m looking for a response. They’re not happy with what they’ve done – at the moment everybody is emotional because it’s not acceptable.

“In the last four weeks we’ve been playing all right and it’s baffling that we could serve up something like that.

“It was schoolboy stuff, a really poor level of performance and it wasn’t acceptable.”