fevnut's musings #07: Craig Hall 300, Spirit gone and Building a Team

   

Congratulations to Craig Hall

There wasn’t much to feel cheerful about last Sunday. Yes, we won but it was another lacklustre performance (trying to be polite there!).

Despite that, there was a moment of note when Craig Hall’s final kick at goal took his points tally for the year to 300 for the second year running.

Throughout our history only six players in all have achieved the 300 points in a season although it has actually now been done 12 times but several of those six have done it more than once: Liam Finn and Jamie Rooney 3 times, Steve Quinn and Craig Hall twice and Martin Pearson and Kyle Briggs once.

Some might be surprised that Steve Quinn doesn’t figure higher in the table but then you have to remember that when he was playing a try only scored 3 points. Under the modern 4 point try he would have scored 392 points in 1979-80 and 336 points in 1976-77. Steve Quinn is the only Fev player to have surpassed the 300 points whilst playing in the top tier which was the case in the 1976-77 Championship winning season.

It is clear that, if he isn’t dropped again, Craig will move further up the table by the end of the year.

 

Where has the spirit gone?

In the early days of this season watching Fev play was sheer joy. Our attack was really incisive and our defence was rock solid.

But most of all the joy came from the tremendous team spirit. It looked as if every one of our players was really proud to be wearing the Fev shirt and it felt as if they were all so happy playing together as a team.

Sad to say, that spirit seems to have drifted away somewhat. We do wonder how much fear of getting dropped and the multiple changes in the squad have contributed to the current state of affairs.

Of course, we have been really unfortunate with injuries and that inevitably leads to a weakening of performance levels.

 

Building a Team

We have long believed that having a successful team that fans identify with involves building a team from youngsters up.

If we think back there is little to match the excitement of watching the development of young players such as Paul Newlove who made his début in 1988 at the age of 17 and Jamie Rooney who played in the first team in 1998 at 18 years old. Alan Banks, Karl Pratt and Jamie Stokes were only 16 and there were a number of notable players who began their first team career at Fev when 17. Amongst those are Martin Pearson, Harold Box, Chris Bibb, Malcolm Dixon and Jimmy Thompson. 

Of course, the biggest barrier to building a team with youngsters is the lack of a reserve competition for the likes of Rovers. 

As a result of illness we have watched more matches on television this year and can’t help comparing the younger players making such an impact and generating excitement at St. Helens and Leeds to the age of our squad.

Last Sunday, our starting pack was made up of three twenty-nine year olds and three in their thirties with an average age for the pack of thirty-two. They are good players but none of them will be playing together for long. Some say that forwards take a long time to reach their best but Jimmy Thompson and Malcolm Dixon were good enough in their teens and developed into truly great players.

That team last Sunday contained just 3 players under the age of 25. The two youngest (Jack Broadbent and Sam Eseh) are on loan and we won’t be seeing them develop as Fev players. The only one of our own is Morgan Smith who is 24.