fevnut's blog: Fev v Halifax (Summer Bash)

Match 18: Halifax 

(Summer Bash) Championship

fevnut's musings

We loathe Blackpool

Do you remember, back in 2006, when the full fury of the Aussie press was launched upon Leon Pryce. He was in Australia with the Great Britain Lions touring tem for a three test series. We thought that he had lost his marbles. Not for disparaging for Bondi but because he would have had a case if he had compared it unfavourably to one of the Yorkshire coastal resorts but Blackpool - absolutely crazy! We loathe Blackpool, and have got to almost dreading Summer Bash. It’s never the best of journeys but to have the Bash there on a Bank Holiday weekend means it is impossible to avoid the most terrible traffic jams. We’ve tried several alternative routes but never managed to escape from nose to nose clogged up roads.

We never did like Blackpool, ever since attending Trade Union conferences there many moons ago. It’s why we never attend the whole weekend. For us it is get in and get out as soon as possible although this year we are trying a different approach and staying overnight but some way out of Blackpool to the North. A decision brought about so that we can be there to watch Fev Ladies in action at 12.30 on Saturday.

Of course, our Blackpool phobia has been hugely compounded by the agony of watching Fev at Bloomfield Road over recent years. Three times at Summer Bash and three defeats.

24-May-15	Leigh Centurions	C	12-31 L	2015	SB
29-May-16	Halifax	C	0-37 L	2016	SB
27-May-17	London Broncos	C	16-42 L	2017	SB

That’s an aggregate score of 28 points for Fev and 110 against! And there’s more Bloomfield woe because we were there for a Northern Rail Cup final against Halifax that we lost 21-12 in 2012.

It does seem to be Bloomfield Road that is the curse because we never lost playing against Blackpool Panthers or Blackpool Borough.

But all bad things have to come to an end and we are absolutely desperately hopeful that the curse of Bloomfield Road will be ended by a great Fev win this year.

Top 4

At the end of April we were sitting pretty in second place in the Championship and there were many Fev fans who seemed to be absolutely confident that we were heading for a top 2 finish. We were rather more sanguine having looked at the schedule of matches for May.

The fact is that now we are down to fourth, with the worst points difference of the top 5, and have a fight on our hands to ensure that we get into the qualifiers this year. Leigh, who began the season with 5 losses in 6 games, have won their last 11 games and are playing with a restored confidence clearly shown by their defeat of Salford in the Challenge Cup. They are just two points behind us with a points difference that is 47 better than ours. London Broncos had a wobble in late March/early April but now seem to be back playing very well with Sammut in sparkling form. And, although they have a considerably worse points difference than ours, Halifax are just 3 points behind and have a game in hand. So the breaking of the curse of Bloomfield Road is incredibly important. WE MUST BEAT HALIFAX.

As we said we knew that May was going to be a difficult but we did think we would do better than the way it turned out, another reason why it is so important to win at Summer Bash and finish the month on a better note.

We then have a week off, followed by a run of potentially easier fixtures. Of course, our final two Championship fixtures (London at home and Toronto away) are very tricky indeed so we really need to be well established in the top 4 before we get to those. What we need is, starting with Summer Bash, to have our own run of 7 wins in a row before we head into the final two weeks.