TIM Sheens acknowledges there is a lot of work to do after watching his Widnes Vikings side lose for the first time this season at home to London Broncos.

He will be seeking improvements for when Oldham come to town on Sunday in the Coral Challenge Cup fourth round, kick-off 3pm.

“Not good enough,” said Sheens after his side’s 26-2 half-time deficit against London ended as a 38-12 loss.

“We’re disappointed and I really apologise to the fans on that basis.

“Realistically we were never in the battle.

“It’s a lesson learned, if we learn it. We have to say these were our weaknesses in defence and offense, say we didn’t do enough of this, and then come out and do better.”

Sheens, who had the benefit of half-back Declan Patton and forward Leilani Latu on dual registration from Warrington Wolves, said his team didn’t do ‘the hard stuff’ in defence and kick chases.

“A couple of poor passes let us down for interception tries but our goal-line defence was too soft,” said Sheens, who revealed scrum-half Matt Smith struggled with a dead leg and big prop Latu’s services were lost to a head injury.

He felt his players were schooled on the day in the art of slowing down the play-the-ball and controlling collisions.

“We’ve got some work to do on the shields this week,” he said.

Vikings took a tenth minute lead through a Jack Owens penalty but that was as good as it got in the first half.

London hit the front on 14 minutes after Owens lost the ball following a bomb from the visitors and on the next play Josh Walters forced his way over to make it 4-2.

Widnes appeared to have weathered a bit of a Broncos storm until a Patton pass was intercepted by flying winger Kieran Dixon who raced 70 metres for a six-pointer.

The men from the capital increased their lead when half-back Matty Fozard ghosted over with Dixon’s goal making it 16-2.

Eddie Battye and then Eloi Pelissier crossed from close range to make it 26-2 at the interval.

Widnes got their first try of the game on 46 minutes with Owens providing the key pass to get right winger Deon Cross over.

London negated any possibility of a comeback with another interception try this time from Egodo.

On 64 minutes, Owens jumped out of dummy-half and did well to get over for a self-converted try.

With four minutes remaining a converted try from Cory Aston completed the scoring.