fevnut's musing's #19: Blackpool, Débutants and Jack Bussey

fevnut's musings

Blackpool

Do you remember when Leon Pryce got into a lot of trouble in the Aussie press when he said that Blackpool was better than Bondi! Well, we’ve never been to Bondi, but come on, it’s got to better than Blackpool. The only reason we would ever go to Blackpool is to watch Fev play and even that has been dire over recent years.

When the Summer Bash fixtures were revealed a lot of Fev fans thought that it was, at last, an opportunity for Fev to win there. That thought has obviously been reinforced by the way Fev took York apart recently. But we still have to be cautious because it does appear from their other results that they had a huge off-day when they came to Fev.

So, what’s that Fev record at Blackpool? Here’s a gruesome reminder!

But what has been the best we have achieved over there? The answer: a 58-0 win in the Challenge Cup in 2008! Before our recent troubles at Bloomfield Road we had won every match in the town. We are, of course, referring to away games against Blackpool opposition.

So, Ryan Carr, tell the lads that they are playing against Blackpool! After all, York's yellow and black is not that far from the Blackpool colours of orange and black.

Our Squad

Having documented every Fev match we have played since turning professional in 1921, we can’t recall any season (apart from 1921) when more players made their Fev débuts than the 18 who have done so this year, and we are only half way through the season. Even in 1921 which accounted for Heritage Numbers from 1 to 35 at least 20 of those had previously played for Rovers as amateurs. Here is a list of this year’s débutants.

It would be good to think that many of these would be the basis of our team going forward into future seasons but with so many dual reg and loan players involved it looks unlikely.

The halfback partnership of Holmes and Chisholm looks great and will get better as they get more time together but sadly they are both on loan and with Ashton Golding playing at fullback we will probably have to start building the core of the team yet again next year.

Jack Bussey

Let’s hope that Jack can avoid any further involvement with the disciplinary this year. There have always been characters who have been in constant trouble, but Jack is not one of those. He’s a good lad and does great work in schools on behalf of the Featherstone Rovers Foundation.

But where to play him? His recent games at stand-off have been probably the best we have ever seen from him but he is unlikely to get many starts there while Holmes and Chisholm are available. We are hoping that wherever he does play the coaching staff can find away of utilising his skills to the best advantage of the team, and it is going to be really good to have someone on the field who can step in at halfback if there is an injury or one of them needs a rest.