fevnut's musing's #19: WEMBLEY!

        

Rovers History: A New Chapter

There are a few landmark dates in the history of Featherstone Rovers. Dates such as:

27^th August 1921: Our first professional game, which was against Bradford, winning 17-3 away.

22^nd June 1940: Winning the Yorkshire Cup, our first major trophy, beating Wakefield Trinity 12-9 at Odsal.

19^th April 1952: First appearance at Wembley but sadly losing 18-10 to Workington Town.

11^th November 1959: Beating the Australian touring side 23-15 at Post Office Road.

2^nd October 1963: Beating the Australians again, this time by 23-17.

13^th May 1967: First Challenge Cup win. Mal Dixon receives the trophy from the Queen after we beat Barrow 17-12.

20^th April 1977: Winning the league to become Champions, the title clinched with a 7-5 win away at Barrow.

7^th May 1983: Challenge Cup Final but labelled as no hopers against Hull and yet winning 14-12.

And now, without any doubt at all, we have to add 17^th July, 2021. A date that none of us who were at Wembley will ever forget.

It wasn’t a trophy to match becoming League Champions or winning the Challenge Cup but it was the circumstances that made it forever memorable. If you were to select a 17 from our full squad there were probably 11 who couldn’t play either because of injuries or Covid related issues. Head coach, James Webster was also amongst the absentees. But in adversity what a wonderful job Paul March did, especially nurturing the youngsters in the team.

In our team there were several youngsters with less than 6 first grade games under their belts. Jacob Doyle, who scored two tries at Wembley, taking his tally to three tries in just two games. Harvey Spence playing just his 3^rd game, Jake Sweeting playing his 4^th game for Fev (and he has played 2 other games on loan), Loui McConnell playing his 10^th game (including two for Leeds).

The biggest story of all has to be Joe Summers who actually made his professional début at Wembley, what a story that is to maybe one day, tell his grandchildren!

We had thought that he was probably the first ever rugby league player to have done that, but it turns out that he is actually the second having been preceded by Mike Smith of Hull who made his début in the 1960 Challenge Cup final.

 

Trepidation

We were quite nervous about how we would go with so many youngsters in the team. It was a huge blow to be missing both our hookers and Junior Moors who had all been making huge contributions to this season’s success. But we shouldn’t have worried because we had 17 heroes in our line-up!

It was a fantastic game and despite edging well ahead several times York kept coming back. Maybe that lack of experience did tell. We suspect that our full strength team wouldn’t have let them back in but the fact that they did keep coming back definitely added to the excitement.

 

 

Featherstone Rovers: the greatest family club of all

Several times in the past we have written about how there is a unique and magical bond between the club and the community. Of course in days gone by the vast majority of our players were from the community and that was probably what established that bond in the first place. Then add in the fact that Featherstone is the smallest town in England with a professional sports team and so the club is the heart of the community.

Although a much smaller percentage of the team nowadays are local lads it is really heartening to hear so many players from outside the area talking about how they are made to feel so welcome and the way they love being part of a club that has such a wonderful relationship between the players and the fans. If you haven't yet heard Nu Brown talking about his feelings on playing for Fev on Rhubarb Radio you must listen to it. It's available on RoversTV.

 

The First Family

No, we are not talking about the Biden Family, they are merely the first family of the USA.

The accolade of first family of Featherstone (which is far more important) has to go to the Lockwoods.

By now we are sure you will all be aware of the amazing commitment of Stacey and James that led to James’ travels up and down the country over Friday and Saturday. We bet the vast majority of women in Stacey’s position would have put their foot down and told James that he shouldn’t go back to Wembley. But as we understand it, Stacey took a very different attitude and was determined that James should return and lead the team out.

Stacey and James, we salute you and your wonderful family! And many thanks to them for providing us with this photo, including the new baby.

 

Two Gripes

Unfortunately two aspects of the organisation of the match showed the prevalent disrespect for teams outside Super League.

The first of these was the lack of a video referee for a major final. The referee was unsighted but many of us could see clearly that one of the tries awarded to York should not have been. Indeed, a replay on the big screen showed with absolute certainty that it wasn’t a try. The fact that it could be shown on the big screen makes it ludicrous that there wasn’t a video referee to check it. Fortunately, in the end, it didn’t make a difference to the result but it could have done.

The second gripe concerns the ludicrous positioning of the awards ceremony after the game. If someone had set-out to ensure that the fans were distanced as far as possible from the awards they did it perfectly! Why on earth wasn’t it done in front of the fans as happened for the later Challenge Cup Final?

Fev fans would have loved to have been able to see it and we are absolutely certain that the players and staff would have loved to have got their medals and the cup in front of the fans.