fevnut's musings #03: Championship so far, Leigh Match, New Signings and John Davies

 

Funny Old Start to the Championship Season

The first two rounds have thrown up some very unpredictable results. Listening to the radio on that first Sunday and hearing that Halifax were 18-0 up against Batley at halftime suggested that Fax’s off-season recruitment was good and that the team were coming together well with all their new signings. Well, what a surprise, as Batley scored 30 unanswered points in the second half to run out comfortable winners.

 

Fans often think that playing down that slope is a huge advantage but we well remember a conversation with Tim Spears, who spent four seasons at Mount Pleasant, in which he explained that there were some significant disadvantages to playing downhill such as the toll it takes on the players constantly having to run 10 yards backwards up the slope when they were on defence.

On that first weekend Bradford had a big win away at Dewsbury and Sheffield lost to newly promoted Barrow. I wonder what odds the bookies would have given on Sheffield winning away at Bradford by 14 points in the second round.

Then there’s Whitehaven who had a magnificent latter part of 2021 who got thrashed by Leigh in round and one and lost at home to Barrow in round 2.

We should also take note of the fact that Widnes have scored a total of 104 points and conceded 30 in their two opening matches.

Nevertheless, we are still expecting it to be Leigh and Fev battling out for the League Leaders Shield and promotion come the end of the year.

 

 

The Leigh game

 

We were pretty nervous before the kick off. Memories of the 2021 two horse race with Toulouse and the significant damage done to us by the home loss to the French team at the beginning of August.

Was Derek Beaumont playing mind games or being brutally honest in his suggestion that Leigh were unlikely to win?

So, on to kick-off and we had to wait just 11 minutes for some pure magic from Joey Leilua and brilliant finishing from Luke Briscoe to open the scoring. We thought it was a great score sitting in the stands but we had to wait to see the replay on FevTV to discover what an incredible pass that was from Joey to Luke.

And what a relief it was to see that second try (starting to feel optimistic now!) with great passes from Junior Moors to Ben Hellewell and on to Craig Hall. Then a perfectly timed and placed pass back on the inside to Morgan Smith to score. 

The third try to bring up a 16-0 halftime lead was the perfect response to two Leigh players going in the bin. They had no chance against Craig Hall once Dane Chisholm had put in a perfect kick to him out wide. Thank you McDonnell and Reynolds for your ill-discipline.

My did we enjoy half-time.

The twenty minutes after half-time were tough going and it was only magnificent goal-line defence that kept Leigh out. Our friend, John, has spent the last few seasons complaining about our goal-line defence but there wasn’t a peep out of him on Monday!

The John Davies try was a bit odd as he appeared to drop the ball, fortunately behind him, pick it up and then muscle his way over the line.

Almost inevitably Leigh did finally score. What a pity we couldn’t nil them but just two tries conceded in two games is a real testimony to our defensive organisation.

Finally there was a beautiful side step from Brandon Pickersgill to end the match.

We left Post Office Road with a huge smile on our face  (maybe even Brian McDermott might have smiled) and now we can’t wait to travel over the Pennines to Leigh Sports Village on June 12^th to play them again as well as, of course, our meeting at Headingley during the Summer Bash on July 30^th.

 

Two new signings

 

Much has been made of our high profile signings this year. But, how impressive have Brandon Pickersgill and Morgan Smith been? So many of the players we sign are rather older but these two are comparatively young with the chance to really grow into their roles at Fev. So much promise and so much to look forward to.

When we signed Chizzy Bradford fans told us he was useless and on signing Brandon they told us that his attacking skills were good but his defence was useless. Sour grapes again because his defence has been excellent, his one on one tackles great, catching high balls reliable and all that as well as a great side step and backing up.

Morgan Smith was a bit of an unknown quantity, especially after his long-term injury, but it is clear that he is a high quality player and we hope to be watching him for years to come.

 

 

John Davies

 

Congratulations to John on his 250^th career appearance against Leigh and now he is also just two points short of reaching 250 career points.

It’s hard to recall a player who plays with such sheer guts that John puts in every time he wears his Rovers shirt. Not the obvious name to be thought of as a star player but there is no-one who contributes more to the Rovers cause than John does. There is huge affection for him amongst the Rovers fans and it’s all very well deserved. We recently heard another player referring to him as ‘Grumpy’. Maybe that’s because his standards are so high.

A great player, a lovely man and a super family too. Love them all.