fevnut's musings #15: Paranoia, Matchday Programme and 4 new Fev records

    

Paranoia

 

It is pretty obvious that supporting a sports team often leads to paranoid thinking.

Fev fans are particularly prone to this and there are three decisions made by the rugby league authorities in the last 25 years that were so damaging to Rovers that have understandable fuelled this.

The first two were linked to the start of Super League. One was the appalling decision very close to the end of the 1994/95 season to change the rules and relegate the bottom 6 clubs from the Stones Bitter Championship in order to accommodate London and Paris, when virtually the whole season had been played on the understanding that the bottom 4 would be relegated. A decision that unfairly consigned Fev and Salford to the drop. It was a decision that would have been ruled as unlawful had it happened in a public body.

Then there was the proposal to merge clubs which took no cognizance of the very special relationship between clubs and their localities. It was such a ludicrous misunderstanding of that which actually did unite Fev and Castleford supporters – in their opposition to the proposal!

The third damaging decision was the move to a franchising system which led to the unbelievable circumstance of Rovers winning the Championship four years in a row but being denied the chance to play in Super League. Many Fev supporters see that as having been designed specifically to keep Fev out, but if you look at it logically that can’t be the case.

Franchising was introduced for the 2009 season and it was at that time irrelevant to Fev because at the end of the 2008 season we had finished 8^th out of 10 in National League One.

If you go back much further in time to the 1930s there was another attempt by the RFL to implement a proposal that would have led to the destruction of our club. Fev were a very poor team at the time, regularly finishing in the bottom three of the table and twice actually right at the foot. There was a desire to set up a club in Newcastle and some bright spark thought it would be a good idea to move Featherstone Rovers to Newcastle. That was resisted and a completely new Newcastle club was set-up that only lasted two years.

So, that is some of the background that has led to what we can only call paranoid tendencies amongst Fev supporters. The reason we see it like this is because we have regular outbursts on social media that try to explain everything that is perceived to be against the best interests of our club, whether it be referees or table structures, to be specifically aimed against Fev which rational consideration clearly shows to be simply wrong.

"Paranoia is an instinct or thought process which is believed to be heavily influenced by anxiety or fear, often to the point of delusion and irrationality. Paranoid thinking typically includes persecutory, or beliefs of conspiracy concerning a perceived threat towards oneself."

The latest example is the suggestion that the current method of calculating table position has been designed to help Toulouse at the expense of Fev. To suggest that shows a very poor understanding of rugby league history. There needed to be a system that would take regard of the fact that the Covid Pandemic would almost certainly result in teams playing different numbers of fixtures during the season. It was used in 2020 in Super League and that obviously wasn’t meant to be detrimental to Fev.

But even more importantly, there have been many, many years when clubs came to the end of the season having played different numbers of matches and the percentage system was, in those days the norm. It was used in every season from 1907 to 1929 and for a particular reason in 1955/56 and again in 1977/78 when Bradford were awarded 2^nd place on a percentage basis when their final fixture was cancelled (because of a strike by Fev players!).

 

Interesting to note in the above table that from the top eight only two are now in Super League, three in the Championship, one in League One and two no longer exist.

We have looked carefully at the ‘Points Ratio’ calculation used this year to separate clubs level on win percentage. If you analyse the points for and against so far this season there is no possible way of calculating that would put Fev above Toulouse (other than just doing it in alphabetical order).

Let’s be clear. We do not like the points ratio because it benefits defensive records much more than attacking ones. As an example, winning two games 8-2 and 18-4 gives a points ratio of 4.33 whereas winning two games 68-24 and 28-10 gives a points ratio of only 2.82.

We believe a far better measure would be average points difference. That would give a figure of 10.0 for 8-2 and 18-4 but 31.0 for 68-24 and 28-10.

Let’s face it, what is most important is for Fev to beat Toulouse both on August 1^st and then again in the play-offs! Then there would be no arguments and no necessity for the paranoia!

 

Wembley

 

Here we come!!

Train ticket: bought

Hotel: booked and paid for

Wembley ticket: bought

 

Hoping to see as many of you as possible there!

 

Programme

We are so happy that Fev are to re-introduce a matchday programme. Sadly it will be in digital form rather than a printed version but we do understand the economic reasons for that.

fevnut will be contributing to it and the future of fevnut’s blog will be under consideration. We will definitely continue with ‘fevnut’s musings’ but when we see how the programme pans out we will review how many pages to post into fevnut’s blog each week.

 

The very reason we began fevnut’s blog was in response to all the fans who were wishing to have sight of many of the items that had been in the programme when we edited it.

 

 

Several new Records last weekend

Last weekend we played Dewsbury for the 170^th time in our history and our 68-24 win set several new Fev records.

1.   Highest ever score against Dewsbury (previously 60-18 in 2012)

2.   Highest Points in a match against Dewsbury (previously losing to Dewsbury 24-56 in 2008)

3.   New record of 9 wins in succession at the start of a league campaign (previously 8 in 2010)

4.  Craig Hall set a new ‘Summer Era' record of 36 points in a match (previously 34 achieved twice by Liam Finn in 2012). It was somewhat ironic that the 4 points that Craig got for his length of the field try was courtesy of an interception of a pass …. from Liam Finn! The 'All Time' record belongs to Martin Pearson who scored 40 points when we beat Whitehaven 60-10 in November 1995.

 

Not bad to achieve all those in one match.