It’s been a busy time for me with a wedding and honeymoon. I wondered if I was the jinx as I missed the Rochdale fixture, but I was present for the thrashing of Bradford so I think I am safe to watch future fixtures.

The 1895 Cup didn’t give us the best draw with a trip to Leigh for the quarter finals. With only two games to Wembley, I can see clubs starting to take this seriously but we proved we could open them up in the league fixture so we aren’t without hope.

The trip to Widnes brought us back to earth after the consecutive wins and to be fair they were simply too good for us.

Yes we made some errors but so did they, including giving us a prolonged spell on their line during the first half that we failed to capitalise on and three interception passes, two of which resulted in late tries for us.

Off the field, despite problems earlier in the season, Widnes were very impressive. They have managed to keep most of their fan base and have had three home games in nine days generating, I would imagine, close to £200,000.

These are numbers we can only dream of. A typical gate brings in £10-15,000 for us. I also spoke to a Widnes board member who told me that 1,500 fans had committed a direct debit payment of £15/month to save the club.

This is generating £270K per year. Again, dreamland.

The whole matchday experience was impressive too. They had lots of dining sponsors that included interviews with the CEO and past players.

They also had further sponsors in hospitality boxes. On the pitch at half time, they had a disability rugby festival and it was clear how those players enjoyed the experience.

I enjoy visiting rival clubs so that we can benchmark their achievements or learn from their mistakes, but Widnes were certainly something to aspire too.

Obviously, they were mismanaged and that probably results from paying players more than the budget allows but other than that they still had the feel of a Super League club.

Competing with the likes of Widnes, Bradford and Toronto is difficult, but I do feel that we are making progress.

Wouldn’t it be great if we could add another thousand average to our crowds so that we could really improve as a club?

We welcome Halifax this weekend and we did some market research that suggested we don’t attract any fans at all in their late teens.

One of my objectives is to create the fans of tomorrow so we are allowing all students free entry on production of their photo ID.

It’s important that we don’t lose this generation of fans so please take advantage.