Sunday 22 June 2014 18:43, UK
Leeds head coach Brian McDermott paid tribute to injury-depleted Widnes after his side secured a comfortable 38-28 victory.
The Rhinos were guided to victory by a fine performance from Danny McGuire, who scored two of his side's seven tries.
Kallum Watkins, Kevin Sinfield, Liam Sutcliffe, Tom Briscoe and Josh Walters also touched down for the visitors.
McDermott declared himself pleased with the result and also paid tribute to Widnes, insisting they played well to compensate for their player absences.
Credit to Widnes for their effort. Especially down with some personnel. They had a few players missing from their first team and in the past that can prove to be pretty tough. But today I thought Widnes did well.
He said: "It was a good game. At half-time we weren't panicking. We knew Widnes were in front but we didn't panic. It was a real contest in the end.
"Paul Aiton was good for us, as was Jamie Jones-Buchanan. They have both come through the game fine. But I thought Brett Delaney was outstanding.
"Credit to Widnes for their effort. Especially down with some personnel. They had a few players missing from their first team and in the past that can prove to be pretty tough. But today I thought Widnes did well.
"I was pleased to get the win in the end. Widnes have had two tough games and sometimes when teams have a few players missing it can cause a few problems as the people who come in look to step it up."
The Vikings had no less than seven players missing from the team that faced Hull and Wigan last week and the loss at the Select Security Stadium would therefore not have been too much of a surprise.
Widnes coach Denis Betts hailed his side despite seeing them slip to defeat.
Betts was pleased by the resolve of his side, who led 16-10 at the break, and by the fact they ran Leeds close thanks to tries from Chris Dean, Rhys Hanbury, Patrick Ah Van, Grant Gore and Joe Mellor.
Considering this was our third game in a week I thought it was a pretty good effort.
He said: "Considering this was our third game in a week I thought it was a pretty good effort. Today we did some really good stuff. A lot of positives to take from it. The lads coming back from injury - Pat Ah Van and Joe Mellor - did well.
"We caused ourselves a few problems with the way we handled the game from our discipline and making errors and you cannot do that against teams like Wigan and Leeds as they will run points up against you and that's what happened at times.
"We dropped off a bit in terms of focus and concentration and we got caught out a bit and we just couldn't get ourselves back into it. We have to learn.
"I thought Paddy (Ah Van) was outstanding for us but the best player for us was Chris Dean. He did an awful lot of work helping out Danny Craven.
"Overall there's positives and the most pleasing aspect is that we are getting back into ourselves and the way we hit in the tackle. We are getting that back and we needed to."
