T'Other Side: Halifax Panthers

Head Coach: Simon Grix

 

Simon Grix is in his first job as a head coach having taken over from Richard Marshall in April 2019, initially in a caretaker role but was appointed on a permanent basis a few weeks later.

His playing career began with Halifax (where he was born) in 2003. He was signed by Warrington in 2005 but missed out on the whole of his first year because of injury. He returned to Halifax in 2016 both as a player and as a member of the coaching staff. Although he has played for Fax this year he has only made one appearance since taking over as head coach.

Simon is what one would describe as a utility having played at fullback, centre, stand-off, scrum-half, second row and loose forward! He is an Ireland international.

He has announced that he will step down as Halifax Panthers head coach at the end of this season.

 

Captain: Brandon Moore

 

Brandon Moore started his career with Castleford in 2015 and moved to Halifax in 2016. When the Championship was shut down during the pandemic in 2020 he played four games for Huddersfield Giants.

He has now played 181 games for Halifax.

 

 

Dual Registration and Loans

 

Suaia Matagi, Mahe Fonua, Daniel Smith and Alex Sutcliffe have each played for Halifax on a dual-reg agreement with Castleford Tigers.

Currently they have Adam O’Brien on loan from Huddersfield Giants and earlier in the season they had Jacob Gannon on loan from Leigh Leopards.

Ben Forster is on loan at Rochdale and Will Maher at Dewsbury.

 

 

The Fev Connection

Amongst those 81 players who have played for both clubs are Fred Gill, Karl Harrison and Martin Pearson.

We can say with certainty that there won’t be any fans at the match who saw Fred Gill make his Fev début. It was in Fev’s first professional season (1921-22). He didn’t play in the very first match but he was brought into the team for our 6^th game in the Northern Rugby League and stayed for 3 seasons before moving to Halifax and later to Bramley. At various times he wore all the shirt numbers from 1 to 7.

Bramley also featured in the career of Karl Harrison for that is where he began before moving to Fev at the age of 21 in 1985. Unusually for a prop forward, Karl scored a hat trick for Rovers against Barrow in 1987. After 4 seasons he moved to Hull FC where he had two spells with 6 years at Halifax between them. He played 14 times for Great Britain and 6 for England. He is, of course, the father of James Harrison who was at Fev from 2019 to 2021.

Martin Pearson made his Fev début at the age of 17 in 1989 and went on to play 166 matches for Rovers, scoring 101 tries, 464 goals and 6 drop goals for a total of 1,338 points. When he left Fev he went onto play for Halifax, Sheffield and Wakefield as well as playing rugby union for Pau in France. Martin still holds the record for the highest points total in a match for Fev when in 1995 he scored 40 (4 tries and 12 goals) when we beat Whitehaven 60-10.