fevnut's blog

   

  Fev and Batley have now both published their 21 Man Squads.  Luke Hooley has been named in both the Batley Squad and the Leeds squad for their match against St. Helens. 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. Loan players are shown in green.

   Batley We are really looking forward to our match on Saturday. It has far more relevance to the outcome at the end of the season than any of our recent matches. Of course, we are so far ahead in the Championship table that even a loss against Batley is unlikely to have much bearing on the final Championship table come September. The relevance of the match is because we will see how we are performing against one of the other play-off contenders. Although we have only lost two of twenty matches in 2023, it would be hard to describe recent games as good performances, so let’s see if we can put it together against a dangerous Batley side. It would be a good morale boost for both the players and the fans. In April, we beat them 26-18 at the Mount but Batley dominated the latter part of that match after we had been 18 points ahead going into the final 30 minutes. We have just seen that Leeds Rhinos have recalled Luke Hooley from his loan spell with Batley and named him in their 21-man squ

    This will be the 25th time this referee has officiated at a Rovers match and it is now, almost unbelievably, over 21 years since the first time he came to Post Office Road to referee a match which was between Fev and Hull KR. We are hoping that he won't stand for the holding down and slowing down tactics that many clubs are using against us this year.  

   Head Coach: Craig Lingard   Craig Lingard’s took over as head coach of Batley at the start of 2020 following on from Matt Diskin who had moved to take over in charge of Oldham. Craig has previously been head coach at Keighley from 2017 to May 2019 and he started his career at Bramley Buffaloes where he was head coach in 2012. Before taking over as coach he was the head of Batley’s community team and his entire playing career (1998-2008), mostly as a fullback, was at Batley. In total he played 205 games and scored 142 tries which remains as Batley’s all-time career try scoring record. He was so highly regarded by the club that the terrace opposite the ground entrance was named ‘The Craig Lingard Terrace’.   Craig has recently joined Castleford Tigers as assistant coach and will be leaving Batley at the end of this season.     Captain: James Brown   James Brown is the Batley captain, succeeding Shaun Lunt who retired at the end of 2020. He made his début with Swinto