fevnut's musings
The
Sheffield Match
On paper
last weekend’s 38-18 win away to Sheffield Eagles looks like a very good
result. After all, Sheffield had been in the top 5 all season and were looking
likely candidates to claim a place in the play-offs.
However,
their recent form had been very poor. Apart from beating lowly Barrow at the
Summer Bash, they had lost to Halifax, Leigh, Toronto and Widnes over the last
5 Championship fixtures. Hardly a team in form!
They seem
to be really suffering from the loss of captain, Matty James, and first choice
fullback, James Glover, to injuries.
Fev did the
job fairly comfortably but it seemed to us that the sparkle that we saw in
recent weeks just wasn’t quite there. We scored some excellent tries but the
slick passing wasn’t as good as it had been against Rochdale, York and
Bradford.
Maybe the
fact that the full first team hadn’t played for a fortnight had some bearing on
this but they will have to be back on song if we are to beat Widnes on Sunday.
They may be down in 10th place in the table but their record of 10 wins and 6
losses is the same as ours. In fact it is the same record for Leigh and York as
well.
We went
down 44-22 to them at their place in March, but the Fev team that day were
nowhere near as good as they have been since Holmes and Chisholm have taken
over the halfback positions and you can forget the 1895 Cup defeat that saw us
put out a very ‘strange’ 17.
If we are
back to our best, and we are confident we will be, then we should win and
cement our third place spot.
1895
Cup
What a
pity! It promised to be an exciting competition with the prospect of a trip to
Wembley for the team and the fans. The idea seemed so good but the RFL have
really mismanaged it.
It was a
crazy decision to play the final after the Challenge Cup Final rather than
before and they have completely mismanaged the organisation.
The midweek
games almost inevitably led to disenchantment from coaches and the publicity
from the RFL has been pathetic.
On their
own website you can easily find the results from many different competitions ranging
from Super League to the North West Men’s League Shield and the City of Hull
and District U13s but just try looking for results and fixtures for the 1895
Cup. Well, we can’t find them!
And they also
haven’t bothered to promote the competition to other media sources. Nothing on
BBC teletext or on the BBC Rugby League website.
Perhaps the
biggest problem was the decision to increase the Championship to 14 clubs meaning
that there were no spare weekends in which the 1895 Cup fixtures could be
fitted in.
The idea of
the competition with the We#mbley final is good. Let’s hope it is continued but
planned much better next year.
Strange
Tables
The
Championship table shows that there are realistically 8 teams left vying for
those Top 5 play-off positions suggesting that yet again the end of the league
season promises to be very exciting. Toronto look assured of their place and
probably Toulouse too which leaves Fev, Leigh, York, Sheffield, Bradford and
Halifax fighting out for places three to 5.
But we have
been taking a look at the Super League and League One tables as well and noticed
something very strange indeed.
In Super
League both the teams lying in third and fourth places (Catalans and Hull FC) have
negative points difference.
And in
League One the same applies to London Skolars in third.
Here are
the top 5 for each of those competitions.
You can
find the full Championship table with this link:
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