fevnut's musings 2023/#13: Great Tries, Fev v Widnes and Summer Bash

   

 

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 Gareth brilliantly evaded the entire Widnes team to sprint from our own 30 metre line all the way down field to score a fabulous try that had all on our feet thrilled with what we had just witnessed.

We love this photo showing ten Widnes players desperately trying to catch him. They had no chance!

 

 

Summer Bash 

Bring it on. But there is a slight feeling of trepidation as we approach the Bash as a consequence of our lamentable performances so often at Blackpool and again last year against Leigh at Headingley.

 

It’s a bit ludicrous that the venue this year is the home ground of one of the Championship teams and, typically, we drew the short straw in playing the host team. Does it count as an away fixture or a neutral ground fixture?

Despite what we said above, we are very confident this year. In fact, York are the only team we have ever beaten at the Bash. Last week they scraped home by just 4 points at home to Newcastle Thunder who sit at the bottom of the Championship table.

 

 

Milestones

Congratulations from last Sunday’s game to Gareth Gale whose 3^rd try was his 50^th try in his professional career and also brought up his 200^th point. We usually separate Career milestones and Fev milestones but, as Gareth has only played for Fev the two are the same.

 

 

Widnes v Fev

Last Sunday’s game was our 118^th match against Widnes since we first played them in 1926. More significantly it was the 100^th league fixture between the teams and until Sunday Fev had never nilled Widnes. 118^th time lucky!

A win away at Widnes is always a thrill for us, no matter the score, because we suffered dreadfully travelling there in the late 1980s, losing 62-16 in 1987, 58-2 in 1988 and then 59-8 in 1989. What miserable journeys home we had after those games.

A little bit surprisingly the biggest defeat inflicted by either team went 74-6 in Fev’s favour when we won at home last year.

Not included in that tally of 118 games is the Challenge Cup match played at Post Office Road on 17th March 1906 when the, then, amateur Featherstone Rovers team astonished the rugby league world by beating the professional Widnes team 23-2!  

Keep Counting

The six tries we scored last week brought the Rovers total tally since 1921 to 11,989. Just 11 to go to reach 12,000.

 

Who is going to score the 12,000^th?