fevnut's musings 2023/#11: Crazy fixture planning, Sheffield and Coincidences

Crazy Fixture Planning

Inevitably there will be gaps in fixtures, most often caused by getting knocked out of cup competitions. It also arises when there is an odd number of clubs in a league leading to byes in two rounds, and this year, for League One, the late withdrawal of West Wales Raiders.

There are two opposing views on the consequences of having a week off. Obviously, there is an advantage in giving players a rest and allowing some to recover from injuries. On the other hand it can also disrupt the momentum of a team’s play and there have been several examples in play-offs when a team ‘wins’ a week off by finishing in the top two places in the league, and then get beaten in the semi-finals with decidedly off-colour performances. It is hard to think of a better example of this when Fev won away at Halifax in the final league match of 2022, had a week off, and were then absolutely dire at home to Batley in the play-offs. There was a similar result in Super League when Leeds Rhinos surprisingly beat Wigan Warriors in the play-off semi-final after Wigan had had a week off.

Yes, some fixture gaps are inevitable but what has happened this year is down to either rank bad planning or a lack of care over what happens to clubs outside Super League. As Fev fans are aware, we have had a gap of three weeks between the match against London Broncos on April 16^th and the crucial match coming up at home to Sheffield on this Sunday (May 7^th).

That 3 week gap applies to all Championship and League One clubs who failed to make it to the 5^th round of the Challenge Cup. That’s 5 Championship teams and all in League 1 bar Dewsbury Rams.

Why has this happened? It’s because the RFL designed the fixtures in such a way that the 5^th round of the Challenge Cup and the international break were placed on successive weeks. It seems to us to be a decision that is contemptuous towards non-Super League teams. Of course it made no difference to Super League teams who don’t enter the Challenge Cup until the 6^th round on May 21^st. They had a full round of League matches the weekend of the 5^th round.

The West Wales withdrawal caused chaos to League One fixtures. Nowhere is this more apparent than to North Wales Crusaders who played Cornwall on April 7^th and then have had to wait for a month for their next fixture against Rochdale this coming Sunday.

Sheffield Eagles

Did you watch Sheffield’s last match against Swinton on Monday April 17^th (it was on Viaplay television)? It was dire, but no Fev fan should be lulled into thinking that this Sunday’s game will be easy. Sheffield were lacking in organisation and direction and, in the end, were quite lucky to win.

We have no doubt at all, having seen a couple of other games of theirs, that the fact that Anthony Thackeray was missing against Swinton was the reason. They are a very different team when he is playing!

The Eagles made much of the fact that their second try against Swinton was the 5,000^th in their history since they began in the 1984-85 season. The 5,000^th Sheffield try was scored by Cory Aston. Did his Dad order the team to arrange that?!

It prompted us to have a look at how many tries Fev had scored and we discovered that our 12,000^th try will be coming up sometime in the next few matches. Currently the total is 11,978 so it’s just 22 to go. Let the countdown commence! Who will get to have the honour of scoring it.

Milestones

Many, many congratulations to James Lockwood who recorded his 300^th career appearance in the match away at London, and in the same game Riley Dean scored his 50^th point for Fev.

Coincidences

We love coincidences and we got a real surprise one night when we looked at the Super League and Championship tables. We keep our tables up to date and on the night of April 13^th Salford beat Castleford and moved up to 5^th place in the Super League table. When we had updated the table, we suddenly noticed something about the top 6 in Super League and in the Championship.