Match 19: Dewsbury Rams
(Away) Championship
fevnut's musings
Highs and Lows
Oh what it is to be a passionate
supporter of a sports team. We are subjected to so many highs and lows and we
wouldn’t have it any other way! And it is amazing how some manage to summon up
the most illogical optimism only to sometimes (actually, quite often) have it
dashed. fevnut has always had a tendency to pessimism and that helps to
safeguard one’s mental health! Go to a match thinking it’s going to be tricky
and then if you win you get a really big dose of happiness. Those optimists
though must really suffer from having their expectations dashed.
At the end of April, after a run that
saw us win 10 games in an 11 game run, social media was full of our supporters
debating whether we would finish the Championship season in first or second
place. But either they hadn’t looked at the fixture list or they had put on
very brightly rose-coloured spectacles. May was always going to be difficult,
very difficult. And the difficulties of the fixture list were compounded by the
mounting crop of crucial injuries.
So now we have to put another string
of victories together if we are to make the Top 4. And for the time being we
have to do it without Martyn Ridyard who has been the catalyst for our best
performances. But we can do it. Yes, even fevnut believes that we can! There’s
several matches coming up where Top 4 hopefuls are playing each other and will
be losing points. Leigh, who were becoming a huge threat have to face Halifax,
Toulouse and Toronto in their next 4 matches and they will be doing that
without the two players who have received suspensions following their Challenge
Cup tie against Leeds. Both Halifax and London still have 4 matches left against
Top 4 contenders.
But we also have to bear in mind that
we have the most difficult finish, because we end with 3 of our final 4 games
away and that run includes matches against Halifax (away) London (home) and, of course,
Toronto (away). We need to get ourselves into a really strong position before
then.
If you want to take a look at our
listing of the remaining matches for all 6 Top 4 hopefuls then click on this
link.
Discipline
One thing that is for sure is that we
simply can’t afford to continue with the ill-discipline that has affected the
Fev team this year. Our average for penalties given away per match is the worst
in the Championship, and so many of them have been silly and needless. Only
Toronto and Rochdale have had more players sin-binned and we are jointly worst
(with Leigh and Swinton) for players being sent off. It really is time to get a
grip on this. You can’t win matches by regularly conceding field position by way
of penalties and playing with less than 13 because of red and yellow cards.
Reserves
In Gareth Walker’s article this week
he makes the point of how Halifax have benefited from having a reserve team
which has meant that when they lose players, they have a ready-made pool of
available stand-ins who have benefitted from being part of pre-season within
the club and who regularly train together. Putting it simply, they don't need to learn how to play together as a team, they already know. If you haven’t already read Gareth’s
article we strongly recommend that you do so.
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