fevnut's musings
Swinton
We have to
confess that we were somewhat apprehensive about our game against Swinton last
Sunday. There were several factors that contributed to that.
The week
before we had been far from convincing in scraping a one-point win against
Dewsbury. Add in to that the fact that we had already lost at home to both
Barrow and Dewsbury both of whom are lowly in the Championship table.
Then there
was also the recent form of Swinton that had seen them produce a string of
creditable performances.
Well, what
a surprise we got! After the opening fifteen minutes which were very tight, we
put on a tremendous display and swept Swinton away.
Usually we
prefer to watch close contests but the quality shown by the Fev team made it
great to watch. A great contribution to that came from Dane Chisholm and Callum
McLelland at halfback. It was the third time they had played together and it
looked as if their understanding of how to combine had improved beyond
recognition from the week before. Cameron King was magnificent and when he
needed a rest on came Connor Jones and he was great too! Is there a better pair
of hookers anywhere in the Championship than those two? We think not.
Well done
Fev and let’s hope we can keep up that level of play into the remaining league
matches and the play-offs.
York
So, now it’s
off to York for a really important match. We’ve already played them twice and
beaten them well on both occasions but that is no reflection of their form
through the season. James Ford has done a tremendous job with a team that were
in League One last year and if you look through their results you will see that
only Toulouse and Toronto have managed to beat them both home and away.
This match
is our real chance to get into 4th place and potentially secure a home tie in
the first round of the play-offs.
Reserves
We feel
gutted that Fev are not included in the new Reserves competition next year.
Having
already had our academy disbanded by the RFL we now won’t have a reserve team
despite the excellent work done by the club, and in particular Paul March, this
year.
We had hoped
with the super league breaking away with their organisation that the RFL would
really look after Championship and League One clubs. But it appears that the
way the reserves competition has been set up once again it is the needs of the
super league clubs that have been given prime importance with a sop thrown to
the rest by the inclusion of Widnes, Bradford, Halifax and Newcastle. And three
of those are former super league clubs and then there is Newcastle who are
obviously seen as a potential super league club of the future. Indeed you could
argue that they also are a former super league club in the guise of the 1999
Gateshead Thunder.
L’équipe
Featherstone
We have reasons for
believing that the rumours that Louis Jouffret will be a Fev player next year
are very probably true.
He will be the latest
French player at Rovers and most of those who have been at Fev before have made
great contributions.
It started back in the
1994/95 season with Freddie Banquet and Danny Divet. Freddie was only 18 year
old and played mostly on the wing although later in his career he was to be
known as a fullback. At Whitehaven that year he scored 4 tries in a Challenge
Cup 6th round tie taking us into the semi-finals (the last time we got there).
We loved watching second rower Danny Divet who seemed to be somewhat
disinterested for parts of matches and then would do something utterly
brilliant.
Three year later there
was Guillaume Knecht but he only made one substitute appearance.
In 2004, after the French
Élite 1 season had ended, Fev signed Maxime Grésèque from Pia. He did a great
job and both the club and the fans wanted to see him continue at Fev but sadly
he proved too expensive. Maybe, had we been able to afford him, we wouldn’t
have suffered relegation in 2005. Also in 2004 we signed Freddie Zitter from
Limoux who did a good job for us playing 19 games on the wing or at centre. He
went on to play for Barrow the year after and then was in the Catalans Dragons
squad for their first year in Super League.
Eleven years passed before
we had another French player. Rémy Marginet was signed from Palau in 2015. He
played 15 games mostly at scrum-half. He had been at Catalans in 2011. After
his time at Fev he returned to Saint-Estève (Catalans reserve team). In 2017 he
played for Sheffield and then he joined Newcastle in 2018.
Banquet, Divet, Grésèque,
Marginet and Zitter have all played for France. Knecht played for France U21
and Jouffret for France U18.
But that is not the end
of our ‘French’ players. Aussie Dane Chisholm has a French mother and played
for France in 2011!
If he comes, we hope that
Louis Jouffret makes a contribution like most of his predecessors. And let’s
hope he stays with Fev rather longer than those French players who have gone
before none of whom played for more than one season.
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