fevnut's musings #08: A hundred years ago

A Hundred Years ago

Every now and again we like to dip into Fev history rather than writing about the here and now. And after the depressing match at the Summer Bash now seemed to be a good time to look back.

So, let’s have a look at how Rovers fared a hundred years ago. There is a difficulty because 100 years ago was 1922 but that gives us two possibilities – 1921-1922 and 1922-1923. The former was of course Fev’s first season as a professional club and much has been written about that season so we thought we would choose 1922-1923 to highlight.

 

The league campaign

After finishing 24^th (out of 26^th) in 1921-1922 we did much better in our second season finishing in the top half of the table (12^th out of 27). We won exactly half of the 34 matches and drew one as well (a 5-5 result at home to Hull). 

The league fixtures

With 27 clubs in the league, it was inconceivable that each team would play the other 26 both home and away. The system used in those days was that the Yorkshire clubs played the other Yorkshire clubs home and away and the Lancashire clubs played the other Lancashire clubs home and away.

Then, there were only clubs in those two counties despite the fact that boundary changes mean that three clubs who were around then were in Lancashire at that time but Warrington and Widnes later became a part of Cheshire and Barrow is nowadays in Cumbria.

On top of the fixtures each club played against those in their own county they were also drawn against a limited number of clubs across the border. Those were also home and away leaving several teams that there were no league fixtures against.

The teams that Fev did not face were Broughton Rangers, Leigh, Oldham, Rochdale, St. Helens Recreation, Warrington, Widnes and Wigan.

It was common then that teams played different number of games and the league table was based on the win percentage, a system that was re-introduced for the 2021 season because of the pandemic.

Our cross-border fixtures were against St. Helens, Salford, Swinton and Wigan Highfield.

We did the home and away double against Bradford Northern, Halifax and Keighley. Huddersfield and Hull achieved the double against us.

 

League results

We did the home and away double against Bradford Northern, Halifax and Keighley. Huddersfield and Hull achieved the double against us.

Yorkshire Cup

Sadly Fev lost in the first round, beaten 19-7 against Leeds at Post Office Road.

 

Challenge Cup

At that time the Challenge Cup was played in the later stages of the season. The first round was played in February and the final in late April.

Fev won their 1^st round match 5-2 away at Widnes but lost in the 2^nd round at home to Wigan but it was a gallant effort only going down by a single point (13-12).

That season’s final was played at Belle Vue, Wakefield with Leeds defeating Hull 28-3. It was not until 1929 that the final was played at Wembley for the first time.

Yorkshire League

From the 1907-08 season right through to 1969-70 there were separate League Tables for Lancashire and Yorkshire.

There were no specific fixtures for the county leagues, the table being constructed from results between Lancashire or Yorkshire clubs during the main league season.

Fev finished 6^th (out of 14) in the Yorkshire League. 

Leading Scorers

Jack Hirst, our England international centre, scored 18 tries during the season including scoring 4 tries against Bradford Northern on December 23^rd.

The leading goal kicker was Jim Denton with 36 and he was also our leading points scorer with 99, just missing out on becoming the first Fev player to score 100 in a season.

All the above achievements were Fev records at the time which is not surprising in only our second season.

 

Points scored in matches

 

A glance at the points scored in matches that year shows just how much the game has changed in the last hundred years.

With a total of 37 matches played in 1922-23, in 17 games Fev scored less than 10 points and restricted our opponents to less than 10 in 21 games.

 

The average number of points scored in matches was 23. Just compare that to 2022 when the average points per game in Fev matches is 55! That’s a huge change even allowing for the changes in scoring because in 1922-23 it was three points for a try although it was 2 points for a drop goal.