fevnut's musings #12: Wembley, Gareth Gale and the RFL's disgraceful website

 

Dreaming of Wembley

Since 1996 the dreams of rugby league fans at teams outside Super League have felt that the sport is so organised as to preclude us from the opportunity to watch our team at Wembley but now the dream has returned.

 

On Sunday it will be 13,910 days since that glorious day in 1983 when Fev beat Hull to win the Challenge Cup. And if we win on Sunday it will be just 41 days until we will be there again.

Wembley is incredibly special. Few countries have a stadium that is specifically for special events. Most countries use their best club stadia for internationals and competition finals.

The first time we went was as a 9 year-old London primary school kid to watch England schoolboys soccer team take on their Scottish counterparts. Then there was the FA Cup final in 1971 when we saw Arsenal (our childhood football team) complete the league and cup double. By 1983 we had permanently re-located to Yorkshire, become a passionate rugby league and, specifically, Featherstone Rovers fan and it was a thrilling day as we watched our team, rated by the pundits as ‘no hopers’ confound the odds with that thrilling 14-12 win over Hull with a 78^th minute penalty from Steve Quinn.

A win on Sunday will be absolutely thrilling for the Fev players and just as much for the Fev fans.

 

Gareth Gale

It has to be a very special week for Gareth. First of all, his 9^th try of the season against Halifax last Sunday took him to the top of the Championship 2021 try scoring chart. He had been joint top on 8 along with Matty Marsh (York) and Abbas Miski (Broncos) but neither of those scored last weekend.

Secondly, Gareth celebrates his 28^th birthday on Saturday. A very happy birthday to you from all of us Fev fans but please save the celebrations until after Sunday’s match.

And, on Sunday, with a win against Widnes, he will have earned himself the chance to walk out and play at Wembley on July 17^th.

Gareth has already established himself as a top quality professional rugby league player. Let’s not forget that Sunday (assuming he plays) will be only his 14^th game as a professional. What an impact he has made. We are pretty sure that there are many wingers and fullbacks in the Championship who regard having to face him with huge trepidation, not least Lachlan Walmsley at Whitehaven who must be so glad that Fev don’t play an away fixture up at the Recreation Ground this year!

So Gareth, thanks for your excellent contribution to Rovers so far this year, Happy Birthday, and get yourself and us to Wembley in July.

The RFL Website

It’s obvious isn’t it. If you want rugby league information then the best and most reliable source ought to be the governing body’s own website.

Unfortunately the reality is very different and the section that contains match reports is simply awful. Over the years we have raised this with Ralph Rimmer both in conversation and with emails but it hasn’t led to any improvement. What we have discovered that the match report section is contracted out but what I am about to reveal will prove beyond doubt that whoever it is that has the contract knows absolutely nothing about rugby league.

The match reports have a section at the top which lists information such as score, halftime score and the scorers. Below that there is the strangest representation of the team line-ups. Instead of listing the players in position order it is set out in a barely comprehensible graphical manner and supposedly includes photos of the players.

Last Saturday night we wanted to find out the scorers in the West Wales v London Skolars. Unfortunately the site we usually use didn’t have the entries for this particular match so we turned to the RFL site in the hope that they might have it.

It was unbelievable. We had gone to the computer after watching Catalans great win over Wigan with a magnificent performance from Sam Tomkins. Computer on we got to the RFL site and to the page for the match we wanted information about. It correctly indicated that Skolars had scored 52 points but it only listed scorers for 4 tries and 4 goals and had the scorer for all of them as Sam Tomkins!

Subsequently the name Sam Tomkins was removed and replaced with Liam Harris, the Halifax stand-off who played against Fev the following day.

 

Then I looked at the team line-ups. Of the 34 players involved in the game they had only been able to include a photo with one of them. That was West Wales player, Mike Connor. Here’s the photo taken with a screenshot:

 

Look carefully. Do you recognise him. It’s not Mike Connor but Jake Connor of Hull FC with a photo taken during his time at Huddersfield. Even if it had been the right player he left Huddersfield 5 years ago.

The following night I thought I would take a peek at what they had on the Halifax v Fev page. A definite improvement insofar as the scorers were correct. Once you get over the weird layout of the team listings you can see that the names of the players are also correct. But what a shambles!

 

Only 20 of the 34 players have photos and of those only 8 are wearing Halifax or Fev shirts (although they are 2018 shirts).

They apparently can’t find a photo of players such as Craig Hall (235 Super League appearances), Dane Chisholm, Connor Robinson. If they must have photos then it should be done properly. The only excuse for have the wrong team shirts is for players on loan. The only excuse for not having a photo at all is for a player making their début.

The RFL’s own website ought to be a reliable source of information. Instead it makes a laughing stock of the sport we love so much.