Vikings’ big pack pleases Burke

Widnes prop Greg Burke believes that the club’s big forward pack should help the Vikings to maintain Super League progress in 2017.

Burke moved from Wigan to the Vikings in July last season, making nine appearances as Widnes finished in seventh place in the table.

“To be successful in Super League, you need a solid, strong middle to lead from the front and I am certain that our middles are capable of doing that,” said the 23-year-old.

“We’ve got five or six middles now that, when everybody is fit, are capable of mixing it with the bigger packs in the league. Everybody saw that in patches last season.

“With the addition of Jack and myself midway through last year, plus the quality we already had here, we have a strong pack to hopefully lay that platform for us next year.

“Hopefully if we can do that, we can start to pick up points regularly next year, and the fans can see just how much quality this team has.”

Star halfback Kevin Brown has recently departed Widnes for Warrington, but Burke feels that there is still sufficient creativity in the team to complement the pack’s power.

“I don’t see any reason as to why we can’t improve,” he said.

“Everyone has spoken about Kevin leaving, and rightly so as he was a big part as to how we played and he was our captain, but we have to move on.

“As a team, we can’t live on things out of our control and we’ve drawn a line under that and I believe everybody else should do the same.

“We showed last year that we can compete with the best teams in this league on our day, we went to Wigan who are now Champions and beat them with 11 men on the field at one stage, so it’s a case of making sure we do that regularly and hopefully we can push further up the table.”