In this N F P match played on 26 Dec 1999 at Hilton Park , the referee was Ian Smith (Oldham), and 4468 people watched. In cold, wet and windy weather, the half time score was 10- 8, and Leigh received 4 penalties to Widnes's 6.		GAMESTAR Jason Donohue
Leigh Centurions	24
Widnes Vikings	16

This was true winter rugby. The traditionalists who have harped on about a return to Winter Rugby League were served up a treat at Hilton Park. The sleet, the mud, the freezing bones, the squeeze to stand under the only covered section of the ground... Roll on summer!
As for the game, this was the cliche-writer's dream. A real Christmas Cracker of a game with two old enemies fighting it out. Leigh came out on top, but the scoreline was no true reflection of the game. It was end to end stuff at one stage, with any team looking likely to come away with a win until the final score of the game.
A bad start came courtesy of an extremely rare Damien Munro error. He was left stranded with Donlan sprinting towards him, but the normally reliable fullback could only crumble when the Leigh player reached him. But it took Widnes just four minutes to come back at Leigh.
The impressive Jason Donohue went close with a break, but when the ball was passed out wide to Munro, he made amends for his earlier error and dummied to Verbickas before diving over himself. The goalkick, as with all of Munro's and Verbickas's attempts, was missed.
When sparse defence created an overlap, Leigh were quick to execute an easy try on the 27 minute mark, but five minutes from the break, Jason Donohue showed why we don't need Bobbie Goulding. He lofted the ball up high and wide, sending in into the arms of Simon Verbickas (who must have used a set of stepladders to get so high) who brought Widnes to within 2 points.
The wind and rain increased at half-time, but had sadly subsided by the time Leigh came to face it. However, after only three minutes of the restart, Paul Mansson fooled the defence and provided a beautiful inside pass to Steve Gee who strided through unopposed to put Widnes into the lead.
Mansson starred again halfway through the second period when he cancelled out Baldwin's try. He took a pass from a scrum on the Leigh 40 metre line, dummied and outsprinted all the red and white shirts to score a wonderful try.
However, it was not enough, because two late tries from Leigh sealed a win. Their final effort, which took the wind out of Widnes' sails, contained a blatant forward pass, so that was a bid hard to swallow. If Simon Verbickas hadn't put a toe in touch, his try might have stood, and Widnes would have been harder to touch.
But the big point of this game was that we didn't score a single goal. Some of the attempts were from very kickable positions, and it was a sin that we didn't get the two points. Some serious work needs to be done on this.

WIDNES

1. Damien Munro
2. Andy Cheetham
3. Afi Leuila
4. James Briers
5. Simon Verbickas
6. Paul Mansson
7. Jason Donohue
8. Lee Hansen
9. Phil Cantillon
10. Cliff Eccles
11. David Smith
12. Gareth Adams
13. Danny Myler
14. Peter Smith
15. George Mann
16. Mick Hill
17. Steve Gee