Season
hiatus
When we are
not thinking about the lurgy we have no doubt the thoughts of many rugby league
fans turns to wondering what will eventually happen to the 2020 season. We do
wonder whether when future fans turn to the record books they will be rather
surprised at entries about this season as, whatever happens, it will look so
very different from the other seasons in the summer era.
We feel
very sorry for the leaders of the RFL who will have to develop plans for all
sorts of different eventualities because you can be sure that they will come in
for heaps of criticism whatever they come up with from people who would be
totally incapable of sorting out this mess.
Maybe it is
time to take a pause and begin to think through the way the season is laid out
in a ‘normal’ season.
It would be
sensible to consider the number of matches played in a season. That’s something
which becomes ever more pertinent when we are seeing an increase coming in
games that involve travelling abroad whether that be to France, Canada or the
U.S.A.. Certainly we could do with a rethink about the Super League’s loop
fixtures. It would be great to get back to a ‘fair’ league structure in which
everyone is on an even footing playing each other club home and away without
extra matches which make it a bit of a lottery.
We think
that the opportunity for a mass gathering of fans which happens at Magic
Weekend and Summer Bash is excellent but surely we can devise a way of doing
that without it involving matches that contribute to the league table. Maybe really
well organised Nines tournaments. Events which could have immediate
conclusions.
Fixture
pile-up
Younger
fans will probably be unaware of what used to happen, not infrequently, at the
end of seasons before we moved to summer rugby. Back in the winter of 1962/63
we were still at school and remember well how sport was wiped out for nearly
the entire ‘spring’ term because the country became white with heavy snow which
lasted for many weeks. So we took a look at the end of season fixtures for Fev.
We ended up having to play an almost unbelievable 20 matches in 74 days and
included, at one point, 3 matches in 4 days over Easter.
Here is
that list of fixtures.
Now that
was a pretty extreme example but there were regular end of season fixture
pile-ups. We don’t remember the 1946/47 season (well we were under one year old
at the time!) but we do remember being told how bad that winter was and at one
point during April Fev played 5 matches in a 9 day period!
And now we
have had huge moans about much fitter, full-time players playing 3 matches in a
week once in a season.
Keep
Well
Like many
others, fevnut is now in major lock-down. We are not only missing watching
Rovers matches but we also very much miss seeing all our Fev friends. We hope
you are all keeping well, not getting too stressed and looking forward to
seeing you all again sometime whenever real life resumes.
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