Fev and Halifax have both announced their squads for Sunday's match.
We place the players into position largely based on the previous week's line-ups with some guesswork too.
Friday 10 February 2023
Wednesday 8 February 2023
fevnut's musings #02: What a start, Memories and Fev v Fax
What a Start!
There are
always nerves going into the first match of the season, no matter who we are
playing. All the more so when the opposition was such an unknown quantity as
Keighley were.
The big
question was how effective their halfbacks would be. A pairing of undoubted
quality combining former Fev favourite, Dane Chisholm, with former Man of
Steel, Luke Gale.
Any
apprehension was soon blown away with a magnificent Fev performance. Viaplay
nominated young Riley Dean as the man of the match and League Express selected
him as the Fev Man of the Match. That’s some achievement for a 21 year old
facing Chisholm And Gale.
We have no
arguments whatsoever with the nomination of Riley but, in truth, virtually all
of the 17 Fev players could have been selected. What a team performance they
gave us.
Perhaps
most pleasing of all was the feeling that they were so happy wearing the Fev
shirt and really enjoying playing together. That’s a huge difference to the
latter stages of last season and indicates what a stellar job our coaching team
of Sean Long, Leon Pryce and Ian Hardman are doing.
It's early
days and we mustn’t forget the euphoria when we beat Leigh in the second match
last season. Nevertheless we are feeling really optimistic. Let’s see how it
goes this coming Sunday.
Memories
At
breakfast time this morning we went to the fridge to get things like milk and
butter out and noticed how dirty the fridge door had become. So, after
breakfast we set about cleaning it.
You might
well wonder what on earth this has to do with rugby league in general and Fev
in particular. Bear with us and you will find out.
Cleaning
the fridge door is not a simple job because it is covered in fridge magnets
representing wonderful places we have been to and a few other items of
memorabilia. It’s a long process removing them all and then putting the back at
the end.
We sat
looking at two of the items which took us back to very happy times. They were
tickets for Fev matches that we had kept proudly positioned on the fridge door.
One was for the last time we played Cas in a competitive match. That was, of
course, the stunning and never to be forgotten victory we had in the 4th
round of the Challenge Cup in April 2012.
We were sat
in the main stand getting more and more excited. It didn’t begin too well with
Cas taking the lead in the 5th minute but we soon struck back and
went in at halftime 20-10 up. During the break everyone was talking about whether
we could hold on to our lead. It looked a bit ominous when Cas came back to
just 6 points behind in the 69th minute but our defence was
magnificent and then in the 75th minute we managed a drop goal to
take us more than one score ahead and so the game ended with scenes of
exhilaration in the stand with a 23-16 victory.
The
question has to be whether we can succeed in getting into Super League at the
end of this season and restore proper matches with them down the road!
Looking at the match details for that cup tie it’s interesting to note that, despite it being nearly eleven years ago, one of our team on the day is still very much at the core of our 2023 squad and another Fev player that day was actually playing against us in our season opener last Monday. And, of course, one of the Cas team played for Fev from 2020 to 2022.
The other
ticket on the fridge door is for a challenge cup match we lost, but lost after a
magnificent performance.
A young Fev team came mighty close to beating the Catalans Dragons in France in 2015, having taken the lead in the second half and still being ahead with less than ten minutes to go. Sadly, Catalans scored two tries in the closing minutes to win 37-34 but nothing could detract from a wonderful performance by our lads. Two who played that day are still with us, Jack Bussey and Luke Cooper (who, at the age of 20, was making his Fev début).
Fev v. Halifax
If you look
back over time Halifax have had a good record in matches against Fev.
At the time
when we moved to the ‘Summer Era’ in 1996 we had played them played them 121
times with Halifax winning 67 of those and there had been 6 draws. Three of
those 6 draws were in 1925 with two of them ending 0-0 and the other 2-2!
When the
‘Summer Era’ began Halifax were in Super League and there were no matches at
all between Fev and Halifax until 2004 after Halifax had been relegated. Fev’s
record in games since then has been much better with us winning 29 out of 47
matches.
Current Halifax fans must be sick of matches between us because Fev have won the last eight games, our longest ever winning streak against them. Let’s hope that it becomes 9 on Sunday.
To be fair, we ought to point out that it is still a long way to go to equal Halifax’s best run of wins against Fev because between 1943 and 1954 they won 14 games on the trot.
It’s well
worth looking at the history of Fev v Fax matches and you can see the full
record between us by clicking on the link to ‘Past Matches against Halifax
Panthers’ page which you will find on the right-hand side of this page.
This week's referee: Fev v Halifax (Championship Round 2)
For the second week running a referee who usually does Super League matches and one we didn't have at all in 2022. There is an oddity about his use of yellow cards in Fev matches. Just look at the chart below. BUT we don't believe in referee conspiracies. It's just a statistical quirk! Nevertheless, Fev players should make sure that he isn't given any excuse to brandish one to them on Sunday.
Tuesday 7 February 2023
T'Other Side: Halifax Panthers
2023 SQUAD
LAST TIME OUT
2022 MATCHES
NEW SIGNINGS FOR 2023
Head Coach: Simon Grix
Simon Grix is
in his first job as a head coach having taken over from Richard Marshall in
April 2019, initially in a caretaker role but was appointed on a permanent
basis a few weeks later.
His playing career began with Halifax (where he was born)
in 2003. He was signed by Warrington in 2005 but missed out on the whole of his
first year because of injury. He returned to Halifax in 2016 both as a player
and as a member of the coaching staff. Although he has played for Fax this year
he has only made one appearance since taking over as head coach.
Simon is what one would describe as a utility having
played at fullback, centre, stand-off, scrum-half, second row and loose
forward! He is an Ireland international.
Captain: Brandon
Moore
Brandon Moore started his career with Castleford in 2015 and moved to Halifax in 2016. When the Championship was shut down during the pandemic in 2020 he played four games for Huddersfield Giants.
He has now played 161 games for Halifax.
Dual Registration and Loans
Halifax do not currently have any players on loan and, as
far as we know, they haven't entered into a dual-reg agreement.
The Fev
Connection
There are 77 players that we know of who have played for both Fev and Halifax, 60 of whom have played in the 'Summer Era'.
In the current Halifax squad
the only player who has previously played for Fev is Frenchman, Louis Jouffret, who we
signed from Batley for the 2020 season but was only able to play 5 games for us
before the pandemic closed down the Championship season.
There are three players in the current Rovers squad who have previously played for Halifax: Dan Fleming, Craig Kopczak and Gadwin Springer.
Amongst those 77 players who
have played for both clubs are Fred Gill, Karl Harrison and Martin Pearson.
We can say with certainty that there won’t be any fans at the match who saw Fred Gill make his Fev début! It was in Fev’s first professional season (1921-22). He didn’t play in the very first match but he was brought into the team for our 6th game in the Northern Rugby League and stayed for 3 seasons before moving to Halifax and later to Bramley. At various times he wore all the shirt numbers from 1 to 7.
Bramley also featured in the career of Karl Harrison for that is where he began before moving to Fev at the age of 21 in 1985. Unusually for a prop forward, Karl scored a hat trick for Rovers against Barrow in 1987. After 4 seasons he moved to Hull FC where he had two spells with 6 years at Halifax between them. He played 14 times for Great Britain and 6 for England. He is, of course, the father of James Harrison who was at Fev from 2019 to 2021.
Martin Pearson made his Fev début at the age of 17 in 1989 and went on to play 166
matches for Rovers, scoring 101 tries, 464 goals and 6 drop goals for a total
of 1,338 points. When he left Fev he went onto play for Halifax, Sheffield and
Wakefield as well as playing rugby union for Pau in France. Martin still holds
the record for the highest points total in a match for Fev when in 1995 he
scored 40 (4 tries and 12 goals) when we beat Whitehaven 60-10.
Fev Squad 2023: Complete Stats
Appearance figures are given as Total Appearances with starting and substitute appearances in brackets.
The 'Tries' Column gives the number of tries with the Try Rate percentage in brackets. Try Rate is the number of Tries divided by number of Appearances.
The 'Goals' column gives the total number of Goals kicked with the number of kicks taken and the percentage success rate in brackets.
FEV STATS
Abbreviations:
The Career Totals row includes all RFL and NRL matches together with open-age Representative matches. Appearances for such as England Youth are not included.
UPCOMING MILESTONES
n.b. Career figures include RFL and NRL club and all open age representative games but not age-group representative games.
The goals category includes conversions, penalties and drop goals.
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