At
last!
That
horrible time of the year, euphemistically known, as the ‘off-season’ is over
and we are once again able to enjoy (most of the time) watching our beloved Fev
in a proper match. Of course, we would have preferred it had we began the
season at our own wonderful ground but that thrill is coming soon, very soon.
Anyway, we started at Batley and we almost always enjoy trips there. Nice
traditional ground and the never ending discussions about the effect of the
mountainous slope between the ends.
Anyone just
looking at the 38-18 score might think that we had it easy but those many Fev
fans who were there know that it certainly wasn’t a simple win. Batley held
their own for a large part of the game and even held the lead for a time in the
first half before Luke Briscoe’s try brought it level at halftime. We wonder
how often we will see Luke this year. Of all the Leeds dual reg players he is
the one who we feel is really ours.
The team
selection was a bit perplexing to us. Don’t get us wrong, we rate young
McLelland very highly but we would have thought that James Webster would have
played Jouffret alongside Chizzy. The success of the team this year, and
possibly on into next year, depends upon Jouffret and Chizzy forging a strong
partnership and the more game time they have together the stronger their
combination will become. Bearing in mind that Chizzy is out for the next three
games it seemed to us important to give them a run out together while we can.
Championship
Round 1
No surprises
in the results. We suspect that if you had asked people to predict the outcomes
a very high percentage would have got them all correct.
The nearest
we came to a surprise was Halifax, playing at home, having to come from behind
to pip Sheffield by 1 point. Maybe we will find out on Sunday whether Halifax
are weaker than we suspected or that Sheffield are going to pose more of a
threat in 2020.
Did you
watch the match between Toulouse and York on the ‘Our League App’? Last year we
had a load of problems with the app and, in any case, we really don’t like
watching matches on a computer screen. It’s bearable when it’s one of our own
games on FevTV but not when it’s a match not involving Rovers. Nevertheless we thought
we would try again and not only got the app working but also managed to connect
our laptop to the television which resulted in a thoroughly enjoyable game to
watch with outstanding picture quality. Let’s hope it’s a sign of things to
come and with the regular televising of Championship and League One games this
year it gives us all a great chance to see our competitors in action. It was a
strange game with York looking as if they would win only to be taken apart in
the last 15 minutes by Toulouse even though they were down to 12 men after
Lloyd White had been justifiably sent off for a totally mind-blowingly stupid
offence.
We are
certainly going to have to play at our very best for 80 minutes in our games
against Toulouse and London.
A
Great Initiative
For a long time we have argued that the best way to get fans to
truly commit to a club is to make them feel really involved. Davide Longo has
stated how we really need to increase our fam base and attendance at matches.
This week brought an initiative that we have been wishing to see
for a long time. Rovers TV published an interview with Greg Stebbings (our
strength and conditioning coach) in which he went through the players in the
squad who are out injured, what their injuries are, and how long they are
likely to be out. That’s the way to make people involved and it’s also the way
to stop the inevitable social media gossip about players falling out with the
coach.
Well done, Fev. We hope this becomes a fairly regular feature.
Let’s keep the fans informed about our players and their injuries.
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