fevnut's musings 2023/#25: Sheffield, Wembley and All Change

   

Sheffield

There are so many imponderables about this match on Friday. For a start, recent performances against teams looking to secure their place in the play-offs have not produced good Fev performances. Note we said performances rather than results.

Fev’s recent record against Sheffield is excellent. We have won the last twelve matches against them including 6 away games. We nearly wrote games at Sheffield but the first of those was actually at Wakefield when Sheffield were playing their ‘home’ games there after Don Valley had been demolished and before the new ground was ready.

Despite that run of victories, we always feel a bit of trepidation when we play Sheffield as Mark Aston seems to have a knack for producing game plans which prevent Rovers playing at their best, not that we have played at our best recently.

Talking of Mark Aston prompted us to think about the huge contrast between the two clubs on the coaching front. Most of you will remember that in 2000, only two years after the Eagles amazing triumph against Wigan in the Challenge Cup Final, the RFL made on of their most ludicrous ever decisions producing a so-called merger between Huddersfield and Sheffield to form the Huddersfield and Sheffield Giants. It was plain for all to see that this wasn’t a merger but an annihilation of the Eagles in order to strengthen the Giants. Mark Aston is generally disliked by Rovers fans but he should be credited with his decision to immediately reform the Sheffield Eagles. And since that time (24 seasons in all) he has been their head coach for 23 seasons. The only exception was in 2006, when he stepped aside to the role of Chief Executive and Gary Wilkinson became the coach, but he returned to the head coach role in 2007.

We thought about the massive changes in coaches that Fev have gone through since 2000. It adds up to 20 different coaches!

Back to Friday’s game and we really should win. Sheffield have lost in recent weeks to Whitehaven, York and Swinton. On the other hand, they have won their last four home games. We will just have to see how Fev perform and what effect James Ford has on the team.

 

Wembley

Are you a pure and simple Fev fan, or are you a fan of rugby league in general who is also a massive Fev fan? We definitely come into the latter category. But we find it very difficult to watch any non-Fev match without supporting one of the teams playing.

It wasn’t one of our best days watching the three matches from Wembley last Saturday. In the women’s Challenge Cup Final, we wanted Leeds Rhinos to win. We generally favour Yorkshire teams unless it’s Castleford! So, that one went the wrong way.

Similarly with the men’s Challenge Cup Final when we would have preferred to see Hull KR win. Despite that, we weren’t that upset because there has been so much to admire about the way Leigh have played since their promotion last season.

Then we got to the 1895 Cup Final and we definitely wanted Batley to win in their first ever appearance at Wembley. 

Of course, we always want them to lose when they play us, but we have a soft spot for Batley. They are a real traditional rugby league club and Batley are our favourite away day when we go to Mount Pleasant. We know that there are many Fev fans who feel the same. Some excellent food and it’s great sitting in the area behind the main stand with its picnic tables. Yet again we were disappointed by the outcome but that was more than made up for by that absolutely fantastic try they scored after the hooter had gone. A try to more than match the famous ‘wide to West’ try. What a pity they couldn’t convert it. At least that saved us from another horrible Golden Point extra time. It makes sense in knock-out matches, we suppose, but we still find them thoroughly odious.

 

League Leaders Shield

We still cling to the belief that the REAL champions of a league competition are the team that finishes top of the table. Mathematically, Fev need just four more points to clinch top place and, although we have become rather despondent about our recent performances, we are completely confident that Fev will claim the trophy.

Why so confident? Despite the fact that we end the league campaign with five away matches (including last week at Halifax) and only two at home, amongst our remaining games we play Keighley at home and Newcastle away. However pessimistic we might sometimes get we look at those two clubs’ recent performances and we should beat them easily even if we continue to put in poor performances!

All Change

We weren’t at all surprised when Sean Long ‘departed’. That’s because the Fev Chairman was sat behind us during the game against Batley. To say that he was getting upset about the way the Fev team was performing is a huge understatement! We came away from the game with the thought that if there wasn’t a huge improvement in the performance against Halifax then it was very likely that changes would be made in our coaching set up.

We don’t want to make much comment about the change yet, except to wish James Ford all the best in his new role. There is, however, one particular area where we are hoping that our style of play is different from that we have seen in recent weeks.

We had a rummage through the archives and found this photo of James from his playing days at Fev between 2003 and 2005. Incidentally, James moved from Fev to Sheffield Eagles where he played for 4 years under Mark Aston so he should know all about the way he thinks and the way he develops his game plans.

Back to the change we most want to see. We have two excellent wingers in Gareth Gale and Luke Briscoe, both of whom have proved themselves to be prolific try scorers when they are given the chance. Luke, of course, equalled the World record for tries in successive matches back in 2018. Gaz scored 18 tries in the first 13 matches this season. Since then, he has scored just three tries in 9 matches. The reason looks pretty obvious from where we sit. Only rarely do they seem to be getting the ball other than when running it out of defence. No one is creating the opportunities for them to use their capacity to score tries. Over the last few weeks Gaz has hardly received any passes at all! We have a wonderful resource in their try scoring ability. For goodness sake let’s use it.