Match 3: London (Away - Championship)
fevnut's musings
Even MORE Joyful!!
Last week we wrote about the joy of
watching the match against Halifax. Little were we to know that the match
against Toulouse would be even better, much, much better! That second-half
performance was utterly thrilling. To come from 14-8 down in the 42nd minute to
take the score to an unassailable 36-14 lead was thrilling. The fact that it
was against a fulltime team in the second half made it even more special.
Strangely, it wouldn’t have been so thrilling if we had blown them away in the
first half but we all know that in recent years we have really struggled to put
in 80 minute performances.
We were asked about who we would have
chosen as the Man of the Match and we had to say that we wanted to award it to
all 19 players! But, if it had to be just one, we would also have chosen Mitch
Clark for his awesome display from the moment he came on. We would love to see
his loan period extended. In our dreams it becomes a full season loan followed
by his becoming a signed-up Fev player. After all, he belongs here where his
father played so well for Fev. Did you notice that there were two players on
the pitch whose father’s had played for Fev? Ironically they were both the sons
of New Zealanders. The other had a far less distinguished game than Mitch. Have
you realised who it was? It was Tyla Hepi, playing for Toulouse (and getting
sin-binned for striking) whose father, Brad, played seven games for Fev back in
early 2000 before moving on to Salford.
The days of teams with local lads
Each week fevnut’s blog publishes an
article by Gareth Walker. Last week in League Express he wrote a fascinating
piece about the way that Halifax have developed a squad that has many local
lads. Reading the article we were reminded of Eddie Waring’s commentary on a
Fev tem in the Challenge Cup Final when he said “That’s Mick Smith. He’s the
foreigner in the team - he comes from Doncaster!” Apparently Halifax have 13
players that come from the town or its local area. This is the consequence of
the pathway that they have established through an Academy side based at
Calderdale College, through to a reserve team and then on to the first team
squad. That seems to us to be an excellent example that is worth following for
the whole of the Rugby League. Can’t afford to run reserve teams? Can we really
afford not to do so?
Gareth Hock played tiddly-winks for
Great Britain?
According to our stats last Sunday’s
encounter with Toulouse was Gareth Hock’s 300th careerl appearance. We were
somewhat surprised to learn that according to the RL it was his 299th and his
300th will come this Sunday, if he plays. So we went back to try and discover
where the discrepancy lay. In the end we found it. It lies in a match whilst he
was on tour for Great Britain in for the Tri-Nations competition in 2006. The
team played a warm-up match against a Newcastle Division team in Australia and
Gareth played in that match. It was a Great Britain team, picked by the Great
Britain coach (Brian Noble) and arranged by the RL’s management team. But
apparently we are told that it doesn’t count as a professional appearance.
Really?! Are they telling us that they went out onto the pitch and played
tiddly-winks? For us, if it was a match played with Great Britain shirts, under
a Great Britain coach arranged by the management then it is a ‘professional’
appearance. We still think that Gareth made his 300th career appearance last Sunday!
And you thought being a rugby league statistician was simple?
No comments:
Post a Comment