Match 14: Sheffield Eagles (Home)fevnut's musings
Sad and Gutted
For me, the victory last
Sunday in the Challenge Cup had the gilt taken off it as the news came through
that Andy Bostock had broken his hand and would be out for about six to eight
weeks. I am sure that there are better props than Andy playing in the Super
League but there are very few his equal in the Championship. And even those in
Super League who have greater power than he possesses, there are none who I enjoy
watching more than Andy. Every time he gets the ball in his hands there is a
buzz of excitement and a large part of that is due to his unpredictability.
Yes, there are times when
he produces an offload which fails and gifts possession back to the opposition,
but far more often his offloads create havoc in our opponents defence and have
been a core feature of our success. What’s more, this year he seems to have
added a zest for scoring himself which we haven’t really seen since the days
when he was playing at centre. In the whole of last season he just scored the
one try. This year he had already gone over the line four times.
I seem to remember an
injury to Andy in the past when he was brought back too soon and ended up being
on the sidelines for rather longer as a result. Much as we will all miss him in
the next few weeks, let’s hope that when he does return his injury will be
fully mended.
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On the subject of
Featherstone forwards I noticed that the Sheffield match is being played on
April 30th, a date that should have been Roy Powell’s 52nd birthday. What a
huge loss his early death in 1998 was to the world of rugby league. He was one
of the nicest people ever to play our sport, and amazing that someone with so
little natural aggression could be such an effective forward that he was capped
19 times for Great Britain. For most of his career he played with Leeds and
then Bradford but between 1995 and 1997 he was at Featherstone and played 61
games for us. He played under Peter Fox at Leeds, Bradford and for Great
Britain and Peter once said of Roy:
'He
was a smashing lad who would do anything for anybody. On the field he would
forage forever. Whenever you needed him, he was there. He was a fantastic
worker, but he could also release the ball, which was something he developed
later in his career. He would have made a good coach because he never lost his
temper. I used to play hell with him, telling him that if he had a fraction of
my aggression he'd have been a world beater, but it just wasn't him.'
Roy was also a great friend of Deryck Fox and
it was whilst crossing a playing field at Rochdale where he was assisting Deryck
who was the head coach that Roy collapsed and died.
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Finally, last week I wrote
about the problems of League One. This week I came across an article by Chris
Park about the restructuring of the leagues in his blog. You may agree with him
or not but his article is very well worth reading. You can find it with this
link:
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