fevnut's musings #17: RL is coming home, Feeling sad for Jack and Thomas, Game of two halves

      

Rugby League is coming home

 

If there’s one thing we have learned during the Euros it is that rugby league is a hugely better sport than soccer! We are absolutely certain that what happens on the Wembley pitch on July 17^th will be an immeasurably better spectacle than what will have happened there six days earlier.

And fevnut is going home too. Although our real home now is in the Wakefield area  where we have lived for not far short of 50 years (Wakefield, Pontefract, Ackworth and for the last 15 years Featherstone) we were actually born and brought up only a few miles away from Wembley.

If anyone dares to suggest that we can’t be a proper Fev fan if we sound like a Londoner then our rejoinder is simple. Most Fev fans live in the area by accident of birth, but fevnut positively chose to make it our home!

We simply can’t wait to see our glorious team walking out onto that Wembley pitch.

We know that many Fev fans will be leaving after the 1895 Cup final has finished. We won’t. We will, for the first time in our life, become a temporary St. Helens supporter for the duration of the second match on the day.

 

 

Feeling sad for Jack and Thomas

 

A great win for Fev last Saturday, but much of the gloss was taken off by those injuries to Jack and Thomas. We feel so sad for them. They have both already had substantial injury lay-offs this year and then to get injured again two weeks before Wembley must have been an awful sickener for them.

Having looked at the incidents on the video, it would seem that Thomas was simply very unlucky. You can’t say the same for the tackle that injured Jack. It looks like the worst sort of cannonball tackle and we expect the RL judiciary to give a significant ban to the perpetrator.

Injuries in rugby league will happen because it is a tough sport. But there should be no room whatsoever for the type of tackle that has a high probability of causing significant damage to an opposition player.

 

 

A game of two halves

 

Have you noticed the big difference between Fev’s scoring in the first and second halves of our matches? Here are the first and second half scores in our last 8 games.

In only two of those games (Dewsbury and Halifax) did we score more in the second half. Three times we have scored 40 or more in the first half and only done that once in a second half.

 

What’s going on? Are we relaxing too much when we have had a good first 40 minutes? Are opposition coaches adjusting at half-time having worked out in the first half how to counter Fev’s attack? Is it simply coincidence?

 

 

Hat Tricks

 

A few games ago we remarked to a friend how we had been scoring loads of tries but no Fev player had scored a hattrick.

It always used to be said about London buses that you could wait at a bus-stop for what seemed like ages for the bus you want and then three would come along together.

Well it’s been like that with hat tricks for Fev. No hat-tricks in the first 12 games of the season and then:

13^th game (v Dewsbury) – 4 tries for Dean Parata and 3 for Craig Hall

14^th game (v Newcastle) – 6 tries for Gareth Gale

15^th game (v London) – 3 tries for Craig Hall

 

 

Positions

 

Is it time to re-think the names we give to positions in a rugby league team. For our younger readers let’s look at the positions in soccer when we were young. Then every team had a goalkeeper, two full backs, three half backs (right, centre and left), two wingers, two inside forwards and a centre forward. You would think a commentator had gone mad if they used some of those names now.

 

Whether or not scrums ever return, they have become a very minor part of our games but we persist with calling a player a hooker even though he never hooks. Props who don’t prop anything and second rows who never go behind a first row and a loose forward who nowadays is a middle heavy weight forward.

Second rows are becoming more and more interchangeable with centres, wingers spend a lot of their time taking the ball up like the traditional role of a forward.

It must be really confusing to anyone newly attracted to rugby league whether they be kids or converts.

Maybe it’s time to re-name positions. Understanding the shape of a team enhances one’s enjoyment of a game.