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.