fevnut's musings #7: That was good, wasn't it?

fevnut's musings

That was good, wasn’t it?

What a great performance that was by the lads (particularly in the second half) against Batley.

There was some beautiful flowing rugby, neat kicks and a pretty solid defence. Watching it again on Rovers TV confirmed that Watson Boas, Cameron King and Brad Singleton were stand-out performers confirming what we thought when watching it live.

But what we hadn’t noticed at the ground was how instrumental Ase Boas was in many of our best moves.

It would seem that the team is gelling together quicker than we could have reasonably expected and we suspect that over the next few weeks they will get better and better. But let’s not get carried away. There’s likely to be the odd slip-up on the way!

The only doubt we have was whether we were really good or that it was Batley being awful. Well, again, time will tell.

It’s Leigh again

Over the last few years Fev fans attitude to Leigh Centurions has become rather like the regard we have for Cas. We find it difficult to get worked up about Cas when we hardly ever play them except in meaningless pre-season games. But Leigh have been an ever present thorn in our side over the last few years. Between 2014 and 2017 we played them ten times and lost the lot. In several of those games it appeared that Leigh were using very dubious tactics and unfortunately on several occasions we responded to that in the wrong way.

That’s why the win at Leigh Sports Village in March last year was really joyful! Even losing at home to them in May couldn’t wipe that out.

It’s likely to be a strange game on Sunday with both sides being jam-packed with new recruits, largely a consequence of the financial problems caused by us both losing out on last year’s top 4. To illustrate the point, the Leigh team that took the field last week had only one member (Micky Higham) of their 2018 squad. Fev were a bit more recognisable in that there were 4 players who finished last season as signed members of the Rovers squad and there were also 4 more who had played some games for us in 2018 on dual reg..

Again, a consequence of both the financial situation and injuries, the teams that played in our last encounter - the 2018 Championship Shield Final - were unusual. A week prior it was looking as if neither team could make up a full squad which led to the RFL allowing us both to take players on dual reg and loan. The result was a match that was being played for a trophy having ten players making their débuts! We bet that has never happened before.

We are hoping that we get a good game and that neither the coaches, players nor the referee allow things to get out of hand. It is likely that there will be a fair bit of winding up on the pitch, especially with Ridyard and Brooks there for Leigh, let alone Duffy as their coach. Fun as they may be sometimes, we hope the match doesn’t descend into a succession of brawls ending up in suspensions. With Widnes to play a fortnight later we need to be at full strength for that one.

Finances

Rugby League finances tend to be as opaque as a ten ton block of cement. We make absolutely no claim to be able to understand them.

Sometimes we find club finances very puzzling. Last year we lost out on the financial bonus of making The Qualifiers and were all told how the playing budget had to be trimmed.

We just don’t understand how that relates to our recruitment of 5 overseas players, two new players in the last week who had been full-time previously at Leeds and now rumours in the press that we are after Ryan Brierley and a super league prop.

Don’t get us wrong. We are delighted to see how the squad has been assembled, we are just puzzled and a little bit worried as to how we are affording them.