A fevnut special: Fev's Youngest Players

 

Featherstone Rovers’ Youngest Players

We need to begin with a ‘health warning’! We don’t know for certain who Fev’s youngest ever player was. In our player database there are a little over 1,100 players who have played in the first team and we only have the dates of birth for just over 600 of them. Many we will never know although as each month passes more dates of birth get added as we make contact with the relatives of players.

We know the dates on which every player made their début but if we haven’t got their date of birth we don’t know how old they were!

At the bottom of the page we have listed all the players with unknown dates of birth and make this plea. Are you related to any of them or do you know anyone who is? If so, is it possible to find out their dates of birth? If so, please email us at fevblog452@gmail.com

 

The Young Ones

These are the 25 youngest players that we know about. Two of them only played the one game.

 

Billy Judge (1)

Billy Judge, the youngest of them all. He was an ‘A’ team player, who got to play one first team game against Keighley in a Wartime Emergency League game against Keighley at Post Office Road on the 6^th September 1941. But that wasn’t the only first team game in which Billy played. That season the Challenge Cup was played at the end of the year after the league programme had been completed. In the first round (which was played over two legs) we were drawn against St. Helens. With all the problems of maintaining teams during war time, St. Helens arrived at Post Office Road a man short. So, Fev ‘lent’ Saints a player and that was Billy Judge who by accounts of the time had a good game with Saints winning 21-11.

 

Karl Pratt (2)

Karl started out at Hunslet Parkside and joined Leeds Rhinos academy but was released by them and joined Rovers, making his début as a sub away to Keighley on 8^th June 1997. The last of his 48 games for Rovers was in the 1998 Grand Final against Wakefield in which he scored the infamous try that was disallowed for a knock-on. Had the try stood history would have been changed because it would have given Fev the title and promotion into Super League.

He then re-joined the Leeds Rhinos and then Bradford Bulls in 2003. He was at stand-off for the Bulls  in their 2003 Grand Final win against Wigan.

Sadly, Karl’s career was ended by a persistent shoulder injury at the age of 25 but not before but not before he had played for Yorkshire, England and Great Britain.

 

Jamie Stokes (3)

Jamie’s début was on 14^th July 1996 at home to Whitehaven and he scored two tries in that game. He went onto play 196 games for Fev and scored 117 tries including 7 hat-tricks (the third highest number of any Fev player). Those 117 tries place him in 8th place on the list of Fev's all time highest try scorers.

After nine seasons at Rovers he ended his career with a further four years at Batley.

Missing Dates of Birth