fevnut's musings
Depressing
It was very
sad to see so many Fev fans leaving last week’s match early. fevnut never, ever
does that mainly because we note down stats and also because of memories of
very late huge turnarounds. We wonder how many Fev fans missed that amazing
last six minutes against Batley in 2015. We certainly know of quite a few who
were really upset to have missed it.
Maybe if we
had left on Sunday we would not have ended up feeling so depressed for the next
couple of days.
Trying
to answer the question … ‘Why?’
a)
Barrow
We do suspect
that everyone (players, coaching staff and fans) had underestimated the threat
that Barrow would pose. All teams have blips and maybe we thought that their
win against Halifax the week before was a blip from Halifax. But looking
further, Barrow have been scoring a lot of points recently. Sunday made it 167
points in 5 games and that is not what you would expect from a team fighting
against relegation.
They have
also strengthened their team with new signings, they had Luke Cresswell back
from injury and we suspect that there is a strong bond in their squad because
of the number of local lads in it.
We also
should not forget that we struggled against them in the second half back at the
end of April - 22-0 at half-time but 26-12 at the end.
b)
Fev
In our team
we were missing Ashton Golding and Luke Briscoe from the team that had been
playing so well in recent weeks. Calum Turner and Jack Render, their
replacements, are talented youngsters but just didn’t seem to be anywhere near
their best on Sunday. That undoubtedly had an effect on both the incisiveness
of our attack and the organisation of the defence.
The
forwards seemed unable to find the dominance they had shown over opposition
packs in the last few games. We thought that the spirit that John Davies gives to
the go-forward was a real loss.
Perhaps we
have become too reliant on dual reg and loans. The problem there is that,
although the players have made big contributions, we have little control
over who is available and the consequent changes unsettles the team. As we saw
last year that can become a very acute problem at the end of the season.
Transfer
deadline
We keep on
hoping that we win the EuroMilions lottery and a definite priority would be
investing a good proportion of any such win in our beloved Fev. Just imagine
the scenario. We make it into the play-offs and our investment enables to strengthen
the team and we finish as champions. But of course that can’t happen because there
are rules in place in many sports to prevent last minute spending buying
promotion.
For the
last few years our transfer deadlines have been tied to the Super 8s but those
have now gone and talking to friends there seems to be a lot of confusion over
the rules for this year.
So we set
out to find out what the regulations are for this year and this is what we have
found.
1)
The
deadline date for transfers this year is Friday August 9th, several weeks
before the play-offs start in the third weekend of September.
2)
The crucial
date for dual registration is Monday August 12th. From then on players can only
continue with dual registration if they have played at least four games on dual
reg. In our case the players who have already qualified are: Luke Briscoe,
Ashton Golding, Harry Newman and Alex Sutcliffe. Jack Broadbent has played 3
times but is now on loan at Batley so probably won’t qualify.
3)
Any players
who haven’t completed 4 games would have to come in on loan and then would not
be available for their parent club for the rest of the season.
4)
The
deadline dates apply to all three leagues.
5)
The area we
have been unable to verify concerns players on loan. We assume, but cannot be
certain that after the transfer deadline any players on loan will have to
remain at their loan club for the rest of the season or return to their parent
club for the rest of the year.
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