fevnut's blog

       Summer Bash   Last week, in our ‘musings’ column we wrote about the corruption of a straightforward and fair fixture list for the league season. In order to have a fair league table, each team should play the other teams in the league twice, once at home and the other away. This fairness is distorted by Summer Bash being a part of the league season. Yes, it is good to have an opportunity for all the teams and supporters to come together, but that really shouldn’t be for matches which count in the league table. Now it has become clear that Summer Bash is failing with attendances dropping quite drastically over the last two years. It was introduced in 2015 and has been played each year since except in 2020 and 2021 when it was not held because of the Covid Pandemic. Here are the attendances for each year:   We decided to compare this year’s attendance to a ‘normal’ round. That sounds a simple thing to do but is complicated by the fact that, this year, the clubs i

 

      

   We now have the full 21 man squads for both Fev and Widnes. For a change, both clubs have published them in the time that they are supposed to! We find it quite difficult to see the potential shape of the teams in the form in which the clubs publish the squads so we choose to use guesswork based on last week’s teams to set them out in the traditional manner running from fullback to loose forward and then subs. Particularly difficult with three big returners into the squad in the shape of Mark Kheirallah, Chris Hankinson and Johnathon Ford. We've listed them in the starting players but it is likely that one or more will be on the bench or not be deemed ready to be in the 17. Any loan players are shown in green and any dual reg players in pink.

      Keeping competitions different There can be little doubt that a lot of the gloss has been lost from the Challenge Cup in recent years. Now there are proposals emerging to give it a new lease of life by having a group stage at the point at which the Super League clubs enter. We were prompted to give some thought to this after reading Martyn Sadler’s comments about it in the last issue of League Weekly. It’s not often we disagree with Martyn but this time we believe that his support for the idea is misplaced. It is another ‘sticking plaster’ plan which attempts to heal the maladies without fundamentally looking at the causes of the problem. It’s an attempt to treat the symptoms without analysing what has brought them about. So, let’s start by looking at what used to make the Challenge Cup a very special and much loved competition.   a)  The Challenge Cup Final was the most important single match of the entire season. b)  The unpredictability of the draw c)  The involvement of su

  Head Coach: Andrew Henderson Whilst playing at Sheffield Eagles, Andrew Henderson’s first coaching role was with amateur club Sheffield Hallam Eagles in 2013. He was playing for London Broncos in 2015 when their coach, Joey Grima, left and Andrew was asked to step in as caretaker coach as well as player and in May he was confirmed as head coach and continued in that position until the end of the 2017 season whereupon he joined Warrington Wolves as assistant coach. As well as coaching he was head of rugby at Keighley Cougars in 2021 and 2022. This is his first year as head coach at York. His playing career, primarily as a hooker,   began at Salford in 2001 and he went on to play for Barrow, Castleford, Gateshead, Sheffield and London Broncos. He is a Scottish international and featured for them in the 2008 and 2013 World Cups. Between his time at Barrow and Castleford he returned home to Australia for a year and played for Balmain Tigers. In the 2008 World Cup he played in two

  There was a time when this referee was doing quite a few Super League matches but in the last two seasons he has been officiating mainly in the Championship. Interestingly, his average for penalties is the lowest in 2023. He is also low on yellow cards and hasn't yet produced a red one this year.

        Great Tries   When it comes to choosing a try of the season it has always struck us that there are two entirely different types of try and how nigh impossible it is to choose between the two. Maybe there should always be two awards. First of all there are the great tries arising from a brilliant solo effort from just one player and then there are the fabulous tries created by magnificent passing and involving many players. Sometimes the actual try scorer has nothing more to do than simply dot the ball down over the line. Whichever type of try it is great ones bring the most incredible level of excitement to the fans. Gareth Gale’s opening try against Widnes was definitely one of the great solo effort tries. That’s not to deny the contribution to it made by Craig Hall with a great one handed pass to prevent the ball over the sideline on the previous play. On that next play Thomas Lacans made a very standard pass to Gareth and, at that moment, there seemed to be little on, but Ga