fevnut's musings
Losing
at York
We drove
home from York feeling really gutted. In so many ways we were the better team
but we managed to throw away a number of good opportunities.
Several
people have posted that the two Fev tries that Fev had disallowed should have
been given. But we have carefully studied the video on Fev TV and the officials
were correct on both occasions. So that wasn’t why we lost.
Despite our
big wins against York earlier in the season one can only conclude that on those
occasions York were playing way below their best. After all, how else could
they have been in the Top 5 nearly all year and even held second place for 4
successive weeks in July and early August?
They were
supremely well organised in defence and that is a real tribute to the coaching
skills of James Ford, who, of course, began his career with Fev. Once upon a
time we used to travel to reserves away games on the team coach and then write
reports on their matches for the Pontefract and Castleford Express. James was
in that reserves team and we well remember him as an impressive, articulate and
intelligent young man.
We are no
rugby league expert but we believe there were three bad misjudgements or errors
which we thought worked to York’s advantage.
The first
of these was to kick a penalty early in the second half which only increased
our lead from 2 to 4. Chizzy was about to come back on after his sin-binning
(indeed he did come back in time to kick the penalty). But it was a golden opportunity,
to really press the attack button with the possibility of taking a really
significant lead.
The
continual running on by physios annoys the spectators and it was bound to one
day lead to the farce we saw in the second half. It had to happen to us! I am
referring to the ball hitting our physio who was idling off the field and not
looking what was happening. The ball hit him from a York kick and so what
should have been a Fev scrum became a York scrum in a dangerous position and
resulted in a York try.
The third
misjudgement, in our opinion, came right near the end when we took a touchline conversion
after Sutcliffe’s try. Being so far out the probability of kicking it was low
and even had we kicked it we would still have been two points behind with only
a minute to go. It took time away from a last chance to collect the ball from
the kick-off and have one last attempt at scoring back to back tries to win the
game or at least get a draw.
The
Run-In
Only a
short time ago there had been some wild optimism from Fev fans stating that
they thought we could finish 2nd or 3rd. In all honesty that has been so
unlikely for several weeks and depended on some highly unlikely results outside
our control.
Now it is
impossible for us to get any higher than 4th and that would rely on some more
unexpected results. For a start we would have to beat Toulouse as well as
Batley.
Looking at
the table it would appear to be possible for us to get above both Leigh and
York if they both lost their last two games but that can’t happen as they play
each other on Sunday.
Apart from
winning the games against Batley and Toulouse, to get above Leigh they would
have to lose to both York and Toronto. And to get above York, they would have
to lose to both Leigh and Halifax.
Of those
scenarios getting above York looks a little bit more possible but we would
still have to win against Toulouse who are playing really well again!
Rugby
League wins the Cricket World Cup and the third Ashes Test!
We knew
that Ben Stokes (the hero of both) only came to England from New Zealand at the
age of 12. But I bet there are some out there who are unaware of why he came.
It was rugby league because his Dad (Ged Stokes, a former New Zealand rugby
league international) became coach of Workington and then Whitehaven.
Apparently Ben did play league as a youngster but as a cricket lover as well as
rugby league we are, in retrospect, quite glad he went to cricket even though
he might have become a good rugby league player.
No comments:
Post a Comment