fevnut's musings 23: Two halves, Fortress Post Office Road, Cumbria and Dewsbury

 

Two halves

There was a time earlier this season when we used to take opposition teams apart in the first half and then eased off after halftime, much to our frustration.

Two weeks ago, away at Batley, we had a very poor first half. We went into a quick 12-0 lead but we then let Batley back into the game with two converted tries and a drop goal to give them a 13-12 halftime lead.

In the second half we improved in both attack and defence which led to Batley failing to score any points and Fev winning 28-13.

Last week we allowed York to score two early tries but they they couldn’t kick the conversions. We then scored tries through Ben Blackmore and James Harrison, both converted by Craig Hall and took the lead. While Dane Chisholm was in the sin-bin York scored and re-took the lead but we were ahead at halftime thanks to an Alex Walker try on the hooter.

Like the week before we looked like a different team in the second half, completely shut out York and piled on the points with 4 Craig Hall tries and a second from Alex Walker.

So the question is what did James Webster and Paul March say to the team at halftime in both those games?

Perhaps it would be a good idea if they gave their halftime talks before the first half and then repeated it at halftime!

 

Fortess Post Office Road

For many years opposition teams have found away matches against Fev to be intimidating occasions. We believe a lot of that reputation was because the crowd is so near to the pitch. A comparatively small ground which generates a tremendous atmosphere although the wonderful new stand at the railway end doesn’t contribute in the way that the old terrace used to do.

While preparing for the York match, we had in the back of our mind that it was a very long time since York had managed to win a league match at our home. But we didn’t imagine it was as long as we found out when we took a look.

 

The last time York won was in 1957 since when (including last weekend’s game) Fev have won a fantastic 25 successive wins in a row! The longest run in our history.

Next week we will produce a ‘fevnut special’ detailing the runs against York and the four other teams for whom we are on runs of more than ten successive home wins.

As you will see when we have done the ‘special’, although we have our longest run of wins against York there is actually an even longer unbeaten run.

 

Cumbria

We love trips up to Cumbria for a Fev match. But once a year is quite enough.

An extra reason for striving for promotion at the end of the season is there could well be three Cumbrian teams in the Championship next year.

Earlier this year Whitehaven looked like possible contenders for relegation to League One but their recent form has them now threatening to break into the play-off places.

Since the second round of this year’s League One the top two places in the table have been occupied every week by Barrow and Workington. Currently it’s Workington at the top although most of the year it has been Barrow.

Three trips to Cumbria would involve fans and the team covering about 900 miles in three round trips! Travel can be tiring and we wouldn’t want the team to have to do three trips let alone the cost for supporters. And then, there’s always the possibility of extra trips in the Challenge Cup, 1895 cup and play-offs.

The only year we had league matches in Cumbria against Barrow, Whitehaven and Workington was in 2013 although in 2015 we had four trips but two of those included a challenge cup tie and one in the Championship Shield.

 

 

Dewsbury win

No, we are not predicting that they will win on Sunday!

Last weekend they did gain a one-point win against Widnes but it’s interesting how they did it.

They scored three tries and two of those came from Jimmy Beckett and Dale Ferguson, both on loan from Fev. At the time of writing, we don’t know for sure whether they will be able to play this weekend, but we guess that the term of their loan deals precludes them playing for Dewsbury against Fev.

In addition to the tries they scored they kicked 5 goals and a drop goal. All those were scored by young halfback, Riley Dean, on loan (from Warrington).

 

Milestones

Yet more achieved by two of our players last Saturday.

Dane Chisholm played his 100^th career game and Craig Hall achieved three milestones in the one game. He scored his 200^th career try, went past 250 points for Fev and took his career points tally to over 1700.

Congratulations to them both.