Widnes Vikings head coach Allan Coleman offered to donate some of his complimentary tickets to struggling fans after the club’s highest home attendance for eight years in Saturday’s Betfred Challenge Cup defeat to Warrington Wolves.
A crowd of 7,011 were at the DCBL Stadium to watch Widnes and Warrington renew what was once one of rugby league’s most heated rivalries, with the hosts pushing their Betfred Super League hosts all the way in the fourth-round tie before eventually bowing out with a 26-16 defeat.
It was the Vikings’ highest home crowd since 8,297 watched the Easter Weekend Super League clash with the Wolves in 2017, and while head coach Coleman is eager to encourage more fans to the ground for Betfred Championship matches, he understands the difficult choices fans face amid the UK’s cost of living crisis.
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“We understand we live in a world where money isn’t easy to come by,” Coleman told the Widnes Vikings YouTube channel. “I get that, but there are always ways and if you’re stuck or anything then just enquire – you never know.
“We’ve got players who get tickets and if the fans can’t afford it now and again, I get tickets and I’ve got no issues giving a couple of my tickets away. I bet the players will and we’ll all help and dig deep, and we just want them here and enjoying it. Whatever we do, we do it together like we do on field.
“Getting fans back together, we do that together – let’s get this great club back where it belongs. But before we start we’re a Championship club and our focus is to be the best in that competition.
“The more who are in here, the bigger we can become as a club.”
The Vikings were one of the few Championship clubs to average home crowds of over 2,000 in all competitions last year on 2,712, although their DCBL Stadium has a capacity of 13,350.
Former Swinton Lions head coach Coleman, who took charge at Widnes following the 2023 season, revealed his long-held dream of getting big crowds back to a club which were regular trophy winners in the late 1970s and 1980s, earning the ‘Cup Kings’ moniker.
He acknowledged they need to produce performances to give the fans a reason to come through the gates, having finished fifth last season then exited the play-offs in the eliminators, but called on the fans to play their part as well.
“I remember coming out the first couple of games there was about 1,000 in the North Stand and we were just hitting 2,000 watching, and I remember saying to [former Widnes head of operations] Chris Hamilton ‘I’ll get that full – I promise you we’ll be not far off that’,” Coleman said.
“It wasn’t quite full, but it wasn’t far off and that’s just because they want effort, that’s all anyone wants. I’ve been a supporter myself and all you want is your team to give everything they’ve got, and we’ve done that.
“We do it most weeks and if we get beat, it’s not through lack of effort, maybe a lack of being smart or the other team being better.
“We’ll always give everything we’ve got and we showed that [against Warrington], so I’d like to thank the public of Widnes for getting behind us and making it our dream as a staff and a new group, but also making the lads’ occasion. They all came in and said it was special, so that’s on those guys.”
Picture credit: VikingJohn/licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license
