Whitehaven Head Coach Gary Charlton has praised the effort shown by his team during their 40-16 defeat to Widnes Vikings at the DCBL Stadium on Sunday.

Haven started well, and led 10-6 towards half-time, but ended up falling to a heavy defeat. Charlton believes it was the little things that won it for Widnes.

He said: “I think we need to learn that to keep up with these teams, we need to be squeaky clean. We need to do all the little things right. No penalties, no errors and be able to diffuse things that are thrown at us, when we have no pressure.

“In every game we have played this year, I cannot knock our lad’s effort. I think they were absolutely brilliant. It’s just a little bit of skill we lack at certain times.

“I can’t knock these lads; we are doing absolutely brilliant. We may be limited; I think everybody knows we are limited to what we have. But in terms of effort, I can’t ask for any more.”

Charlton also pointed to one man for Widnes who was the key for them.

He added: “If Matty Smith played for Whitehaven today, we probably would have won that game. Just with his kicking game, he caused that much bother for us. They had a good kick chase, and did the little things right and we couldn’t build any pressure like that.”

However, Charlton did bemoan his side’s discipline, as a few tries came from penalties and personal errors.

He explained: “I thought we would have learned against Toulouse, you go penalty-try, penalty-try- penalty-try. Exactly the same today, we did exactly the same things. “

Haven now face a short turnaround before they face Dewsbury Rams in the re-arranged Challenge Cup tie on Wednesday. This is before another potential Challenge Cup fifth round tie against Newcastle Thunder.