fevnut's musings #03: Get out of Jail, Daryl Powell and a ghastly playing strip

 

Get Out of Jail Free Card

 

We have been really looking forward to watching the squad that James Webster, Steve Gill and Mark Campbell have put together for 2021. Quite frankly we never could have imagined a team so full of talented players would put together such an inept display as they did last week in the Challenge Cup against Batley.

 

Some people say ‘a win is a win’ and, yes, we are through to the next round of the Challenge Cup and also the semi-finals of the 1895 cup with the chance to watch Fev playing at Wembley.

 

But if we play like that again there are many Championship clubs that will take better advantage than Batley managed. We can’t even begin to imagine winning like that against Toulouse, York, London or Widnes or several other clubs and that would seriously jeopardise any ideas of winning the Championship.

 

The club have put out a highlights of the match on Rovers TV. If they had put out a lowlights it would have been much longer! But we were pleased to hear James Webster being so clear about how unacceptable the performance was and unlike many coaches, he didn’t make any excuses.

 

Let’s hope the players take advantage of the fact that we are playing Batley again on Friday to put on a first class performance and expunge the memory of last week.

 

 

What is it about Batley?

 

Our overall record against them is very good. We have now won the last nine matches and in league matches we have won 23 out of the last 24. Despite that we have had several shockers against them over the last few years.

 

In September 2016 we played them at their place in the Qualifiers and we should have won but were beaten 11-10 by a Dominic Brambani field goal having been ahead for most of the match. Earlier that same year we had gone to Batley in the 5^th round of the Challenge Cup and were soundly beaten 28-10 with one of the Batley tries being scored by a sub called James Harrison!

 

Then there was the play-off match against them at home in 2013. We had won the League Leaders Shield and Batley had finished 5^th. We were hot favourites to beat them and progress to the Grand Final but after 80 minutes it was 20-20 and they won with a field goal from George Flanagan in Golden Point extra time.

 

But there is the compensation of THAT MATCH in 2015 when Fev scored 22 points in the last six minutes to win by 28-26 thanks to a moment of madness from Shaun Ainscough. A match that will never be forgotten by the fans of both teams.

 

 

Daryl Powell

 

So, we have the news that Daryl Powell is moving on at the end of 2021 and fevnut is absolutely delighted.

 

We will be forever grateful for what he achieved as the Fev coach between 2009 and 2013. Fev had recently spent two years in National League Two and he transformed us into the top club in the Championship and provided us with a chance to watch really inspiring rugby from the Rovers team.

 

But, in moving to Castleford (which was bound to happen sooner or later) he left some Fev fans (fevnut included) with a dilemma. It became slightly difficult to have the rightful Fev fans attitude towards Cas when a Fev hero was in charge of them.

 

Thank goodness next year there will no longer be any equivocation whatsoever in our attitude towards the neighbours!

But come to think of it there is one residual problem. One of there star players is an ex-pupil of ours. A nice lad who always sat at the front and when I went to sort out someone at the back would regularly take the copy of League Express off my desk and start reading it. Who was to know, at that time, that he would one day receive the Man of Steel award! But we won't let that get in the way of our thoughts about them in black and amber.

 

 

Scoring the weekend (just for fun)

Despite what we have said about Daryl (above) for many years now fevnut has had a system of scoring the weekend matches to see how well it has gone. The score is out of 16 and goes thus:

 

Fev win: 10 points

Catalans win: 2 points

Cas lose: 2 points

Wigan lose: 2 points

 

In explanation, fevnut has a long-standing affinity with the Perpignan area and we definitely see Catalans as our favourite Super League team. Cas losing, well that’s obvious, and we have a strong dislike of Wigan caused pre-dominantly with the damage we see that Maurice Lindsay wreaked upon rugby league.

 

 

SHIRTS

Finally this week we want to express our horror at one club’s 2021 shirt. No one has ever called fevnut a Conservative, or indeed conservative, but we do treasure Fev and the rugby league’s heritage. The heritage of playing strips is particularly to be valued. Like many Fev fans I would much prefer us to play in the butcher’s stripe and would have liked our away strip in this centenary year to have been based on the chocolate and white shirt that Fev played in for the early years of the club when it joined the Northern Rugby League.

 

So which shirt is it that has produced the horrors. It is this monstrosity from Keighley.

 

It looks as if it ought to be worn by a superhero in a comic strip or on a kids toy and we find it abhorrent to send out rugby league players wearing such a thing!