fevnut's blog: Fev v Leigh

Match 17: Leigh Centurions 

(Home) Championship

fevnut's musings

Challenge Cup: Man of the Round

We had a bit of an indulgence with the 6th round of the Challenge Cup. As well as, of course, attending Fev’s match we watched the three other televised games and managed to catch highlights of the other four as well.

So we thought we would select a Man of the Round.

From our own match there were two contenders. Luke Briscoe for equalling the record for tries in successive matches and Gareth Hock because we thought he made a huge difference when he came on. It was undoubtedly his best match yet in a Rovers shirt and what a pity that he won’t be able to play against Leigh. We ended up choosing Gareth Hock for our shortlist of three.

From the Hull KR against Wigan we thought there was only one possible contender and that was Sam Tomkins but it wasn’t a good game and there was no one really worthy of the Man of the Round.

We have to reluctantly admit that Leigh were very good against Salford and it was really pleasing to see one Championship side beating Super League opposition. We thought that both Peter Mata’utia and Harrison Hansen were excellent and will obviously be a threat to us on Saturday. But were they outstanding enough to take fevnut’s award? We don’t think so.

In the Widnes match against Leeds both sides seemed rather poor and the only memorable thing was the Widnes fightback even though it was in vain. Best player on the pitch for us was Stevie Ward but nowhere near outstanding enough for the award.

Huddersfield Giants against Wakefield was also a poor match and there were no contenders there.

We only managed to find the briefest of highlights from the tie between Catalans and Whitehaven so we couldn’t possibly select anyone from this one.

In the match between Castleford and Saint Helens, Ben Barba was brilliant yet again so he got onto the short list. What a joy it is to watch him playing. An incredible talent who enhances the pleasure of watching every match in which he plays.

That leaves just the tie between Toronto and Warrington. To be honest it was a pretty terrible advert for the sport we love and with the way that Toronto played we were glad that they ended up being hammered. Their attitude reminded us of the worst sort of sportsmanship we saw a couple of years back from Leigh. Could it possibly be the result of them having the same coach? Yes, of course it could. But you may be surprised to know that the third person on our shortlist for Man of the Round did come from this match.

The Verdict

Third place on fevnut’s Man of the Round goes to Gareth Hock for his outstanding contribution in galvanising the Featherstone team after they had been taken apart in the early stages of the match and his contribution led to them matching a very powerful Hull FC for the rest of the game when it looked as if they were going to get a very big beating.

Second place goes to Ben Barba. What a joy it was to watch a player who is so brilliant and plays with a smile on his face the way that Ben does.

And the winner, fevnut’s man of the round is ……. Ben Thaler!!! Well, we did say ‘Man’ of the Round not ‘Player’ of the Round.

Three weeks ago we wrote about how feigning injury and dissent were ruining the spectacle of rugby league and making it increasingly difficult for referees to do their job properly. Well, Ben Thaler was having absolutely none of that sort of nonsense and rightly exerted his authority when the Toronto players tried it on. He red-carded one Toronto player for a punch and two yellow cards for dissent. If only more referees would be show the strength that Ben Thaler did that day. A no-nonsense performance that should be a lesson to all his colleagues. We give him the award because he did more for the good of rugby league than any player during the 6th round of the Challenge Cup!

fevnut’s confession

When Fev signed Gareth Hock we thought it was a big mistake. We thought that his disciplinary problems and his style of play were unsuited to the way in which Duffy had got us playing. WE WERE WRONG. Apologies to Gareth, Apologies to John Duffy and Apologies to Mark Campbell.