London Broncos v Fev: 21 Man Squads

Fev and London Broncos have both now announced their 21 man squads for Sunday. 

We have placed the players into positions with guess work. Difficult to know who will be left out amongst Fev's backs.

This week is particularly difficult with the teams having fielded many changes for the cup matches last week. Also Alex Sutcliffe and Callum McLelland are also included in this week's Leeds squad so will be unavailable if they play. Australian, Mitch Allgood, who previously played for Hull KR and Wakefield has joined Broncos from Saint George Illawarra Dragons and will be making his début if he plays.

STOP PRESS: Neither Sutcliffe or McLelland played for Leeds so they should be available.

Fev Discipline 2020

In 2018 Rovers had an awful disciplinary record.

We suffered 20 yellow cards and 3 red cards resulting in us having to play with less than 13 players on the pitch for almost 300 minutes. We gave away an average of nearly 9½ penalties per match.

It almost certainly cost us a place in the Qualifiers and the financial consequences.

In 2019 there was a huge improvement. The coaching team (including former referee, Dave Merrick) got to get with the problem and the season saw just 8 yellow cards and no red cards at all. It wasn’t just the cards either as the average penalties conceded went down to 6½.

2020 has not started well. Only three matches so far but we have already had 2 yellow cards and one red. The penalty count is up to nearly 7½.

Fev and London Broncos 2020: Comparative Match Stats

fevnut's musing' #05: Last Sunday, Two Roads to Wembley and Dual Reg

Last Sunday’s Match

After having been made to wait 168 days since the last home competitive fixture we set off to Post Office Road last Sunday in high spirits. And that was despite the cold, stormy winds. It felt so good to be at home again and to meet up with many people we hadn’t seen for too long. There’s something very special about the Fev ‘family’.

We were also looking forward to expunging the memory of that awful day on June 23rd last year when we had to endure our worst performance of the year going down to Barrow 38-16 in a season when Barrow were relegated at the end of the year.

So, last Sunday wasn’t quite as bad and we did win but it was still pretty awful and compounded by the sending off of Captain Lockwood. As we write this we are still awaiting the result of the disciplinary but we fear the worst even though we firmly believe that his ‘kick’ was an accident and should be deemed ‘sending off sufficient’ but the way these things are decided nowadays we aren’t very hopeful.

Fev are supposed to be a club who are striving towards winning the Championship and getting promoted to the Super League so to end up with a 2 point margin of victory against a League One side, secured with just four minutes left on the clock, was simply unacceptable.

Yes the conditions were bad, and we were missing a lot of players, but that doesn’t excuse what happened. There will inevitably be times in any season when we are short of some of our first team regulars but we need to be able to cope and last Sunday should have been when we demonstrated our ability to cope.

Two Roads to Wembley

We have a great Challenge Cup heritage so we hope very much that we aren’t taking the Challenge Cup too lightly. And that goes for the 1895 Cup too because us older Fev supporters dream of the day when we once again see Fev playing at Wembley.

The way our sport has changed since our glory days means that, for the time being, the chances of getting to the Challenge Cup final are at the best very remote, but the 1895 Cup does give us a chance to see the navy blue and white walking out onto the (new) Wembley turf. How good would that be!

Dual Registration

We have always felt negatively about the system of dual registration but before being critical we need to get something clear. We firmly believe that, by far and away, the very best use of dual reg has been the partnership between Fev and Leeds.

It is now in its fifth year and only on one occasion can we recall when we lined up with a Leeds player who did not give their all for Fev. Interestingly, that one exception was not a Leeds youngster but one of the very few occasions when we had a Leeds first team player who was needing to get match fit.

Apart from that isolated example we have benefited from the partnership both on the field with committed exciting youngsters and off the field too.

But last Sunday revealed a problem. Do we rely too heavily on dual reg leaving us bare when they are not available for whatever reason? We have some undoubtedly talented youngsters of our own but they are young and they need first team experience to develop their potential. But, so long as we are playing three or four Leeds players in every game, our own lads are not getting the experience they need so on the rare occasions they are called upon they don’t have enough game time behind them to get themselves and the team through.

It will be interesting to see what happens when we play Hunslet in a fortnight because they could be a very big threat if we don’t play much better than last week.

Sunday's Referee: London Broncos v Fev

Sunday's referee started refereeing in 2012 and nowadays he tends to be selected for both Super League and Championship matches but he was only in charge of a Fev match once last year. 

The previous year he was in charge of our Challenge Cup against Hull FC when he sin binned 3 players from each team and sent one Hull FC player off!

T'Other Side: London Broncos

2020 Matches

2019 Matches

FIRST TEAM SQUAD

LAST TIME OUT

Head Coach: Danny Ward

After three years as head coach at London Broncos, Andrew Henderson moved on to become the assistant coach at Warrington Wolves and Danny Ward took over as head coach in 2018. He had been working as assistant since 2015 and before that he spent two years coaching the Broncos U19 team.

This is his first head coach position and in his first year he guided Broncos to promotion to Super League.

In his playing career he was a prop forward and made his début at Leeds Rhinos in 1999. He stayed at the Rhinos until joining Castleford for one season in 2006. That was followed by one year at Hull Kingston Rovers before moving to London Broncos (then Harlequins RL) in 2008. He retired in 2011. In 2004 he made one substitute for Great Britain against New Zealand in that year’s Tri-Nations competition.

Captain: Will Lovell

Jay Pitts was the Broncos captain in 2018 and 2019 but he has moved on to Wakefield Trinity and Will Lovell has taken over. He was born in Northampton and he has spent his entire playing career with London Broncos, making his début in 2012. He has also played for London Skolars on dual reg in the four years 2013 - 2016.

He is primarily a second rower although he has also played at centre and loose forward.

New Signings for 2020

It is commonplace when clubs are promoted or relegated for there to be many changes in personnel but when Broncos were promoted to Super League at the end of 2018 they retained most of the players who had won promotion. Although they were relegated after one year they had put in many impressive performances and so it was not surprising that quite a few of their squad were then signed for 2020 by Super League clubs.

Mitch Allgood, prop, is an Australian who played for Parramatta Eels in the NRL for 4 years starting in 2011. He came to England to join Hull KR in 2015 and then moved on to Wakefield in 2017. In 2018 he returned to Australia with Saint George Illawarra Dragons but only made 1 NRL appearance with them. He was a late signing for the Broncos and has not yet made his Broncos début. In 2012 he played for the New South Wales City representative team.

Olly Ashall-Bott, wing or fullback, has signed from Widnes. He made his début for them in 2018 and in his first year there he played 3 games for North Wales on dual reg.

Cory Aston, halfback, has been signed from Castleford Tigers. He started his career with Sheffield Eagles in 2013 (where the coach was Mark Aston, his father). In 2017 he signed for Leeds Rhinos but never played in their first team but came on loan to Fev and later that year he played on loan for Bradford. In 2018 he joined Castleford but spent the whole season on loan back at Sheffield. Last year he made his Castleford début and also played 3 games on loan at Newcastle Thunder.

Rhys Curran, second row, is an Australian who came to France to join Villeneuve in the French Elite 1 competition in 2012. In 2015 he transferred to Toulouse and spent 5 seasons there before joining the Broncos. He is a French international.

Tuoyo Egodo, wing, is another signing from Castleford. He was born in London and started his career with the Broncos in 2016. That year he also played for Hemel Stags on loan. He joined Castleford in 2017 but his opportunities were limited (16 games in 3 years) and he played for Oldham and York on loan in 2017 and in 2018 for Newcastle (dual reg) and Bradford (loan).

Dan Norman, prop, has joined from Widnes where he was a player since 2017 but didn’t make his début there until 2018. In 2017 he played 2 games on loan at Swinton and in 2018 he played 17 for North Wales on dual reg.

Josh Walters, centre or second row, has transferred from Fev. He was a Leeds player from 2013 to 2018, playing under dual reg for Hunslet (2015) and Fev (2016-2018). He transferred to Fev last year.

Jordan Williams, second row or centre, has signed for the Broncos from London Skolars. He started with Oxford in 2016 and moved to Skolars in 2017.

Dual Registration and loan signings

London Broncos have, for many years, had a dual reg partnership with London Broncos but this usually leads to Broncos players turning out for the Skolars. They do not, currently, have any players on loan.

The Fev connection

Two current Fev players have played for the Broncos. Jack Bussey was there in 2016 and Thomas Minns in 2014.

There are two players in the Broncos squad who have previously been with the Fev. Cory Aston played 12 games for Fev on loan in 2017 and Josh Walters has played 46 times for Fev, as a Fev player last year and on dual reg in 2016-2018).

There is a further special connection between the Broncos squad and Fev. One of their team has a grandfather who made 419 appearances for Fev! The grandfather is none other than Peter Smith and the grandson Morgan Smith.

Past Matches against London Broncos

Because London Broncos were in Super League last year we haven't played them since 2018. Just take a look at the huge change to our players since that match in July that year.

LAST TIME (2018)

Fev v Barrow (CC4): Teams and Scorers