fevnut's musings 2023/#29: Promoted, Hat Tricks, Newcastle and 1,000 Points

    

Featherstone Rovers 2023: Champions and Promoted!!!

Before anyone writes in to remind us that the play-offs are still to come and promotion depends upon winning a play-off semi-final and then the ‘Million Pound Game’, don’t bother because what we are referring to is the fabulous achievement of our women’s team.

The Women’s Super League is divided into Group One and Group Two (in effect first and second divisions). At the season’s end the team finishing top of Group Two is automatically promoted and then there is a play-off for the second promotion place.

Before last weekend’s final games of the league season Fev were lying third, level on points with Barrow but with an inferior points difference of just three, and one point behind Leigh at the top of the table.

 

The final round saw Leigh at home to Barrow and Fev at home to Salford. That meant that it was still a possibility for any one of the top three to clinch the automatic promotion place.

Fev did all that they could by beating Salford 28-18 but then had to wait for the result to come through from Leigh Sports Village. If Leigh won they would finish top and if Barrow won by more than seven points they would finish top!

And then the result came through – Leigh Leopards 12 Barrow Raiders 14!

 

Photo above courtesy of JLH Photography Yorkshire

 

 

Hat Tricks

Congratulations to Gareth Gale who scored his 5th hat trick of the season up at Newcastle, a feat only surpassed once in Fev’s entire history.

The player who holds the record is, not unsurprisingly, Paul Newlove who scored 6 in the 1992/93 season. That was an amazing season for Paul. Fev had been relegated to the second division at the end of the previous season and Paul committed to remaining at Fev for another year to help them in the attempt to get back into the top tier. Not only did he score 6 hat tricks but he scored 48 tries which remains the Rovers record for tries in a season. In fact, with Owen Simpson, his wing partner, they achieved the amazing total of 82 tries. Paul’s try scoring for the 1992/93 season didn’t end there because he scored yet another hat trick playing for Great Britain against France bringing his total tally for that season to 51 tries and 7 hat tricks.

Gaz joins one other player who has scored 5 ties for Fev in a season. Do you have any idea who that is? Here’s a big clue. He was also playing against Newcastle last weekend. Yes, of course, it is Craig Hall, who scored his 5 hat tricks in 2021.

 

Newcastle

 

We have a great deal of respect for James Ford and he has brought some changes to the style of the team that has made them much better to watch. But we were rather bemused by his comments on RoversTV about the strength of the Newcastle Thunder team when they are playing at home.

It can’t just have been a comment to excuse the defensive lapses late in the game because we noticed the same statements about Newcastle’s home form from some of the players.

The facts don’t appear to bear out this idea that Thunder are formidable opponents on their own ground.

They have lost nine out of their twelve home Championship games. Their three wins came in succession in a ‘golden’ period during June and July but the teams they beat were Whitehaven, Swinton and Keighley. All three of those are still in the scramble to avoid relegation.

The 22 points scored by Newcastle was their highest score in matches that they lost and they only scores more against Whitehaven (30) and Swinton (25). On three occasions they have only managed 6 points in their home games, those being against Broncos, Widnes and York.

Newcastle’s average score in home matches has been 15. You wouldn’t have expected them to have scored above average when facing the mighty Rovers!

 

1,000 Points

Fev now need just 12 points to a reach a total of 1,000 in 2023 Championship matches. If we do so, we will probably be the only club in the Championship, Super League or League One to do so this year.

The 2nd highest scorers in the Championship, currently, are Toulouse on 790 with two games to go against us and Whitehaven.

In Super league there also just two games left for each team and Wigan and Catalans are the highest scorers on 664 and 642 points respectively.

League One has finished with Dewsbury at the top on 623 points but then they League One clubs only played eighteen games this year.

To put it into context, in 2022 no team in Super League or League One scored 1,000 points although Keighley (in League One) did achieve 989 in just 20 games.

However, it was very different in the Championship. Fev were the second highest scorers with 1,060 but Leigh scored more with a rather incredible 1,306. That was the highest number of points ever in league games by any team.

There have been a total of 25 occasions ever when teams have topped the 1,000 point mark. Despite the fact that in days gone by teams played more league games than they do now, only 6 of the 25 were before the Summer Era, a reflection of the fact that scores has considerably increased since the days when scores of 3-2 or even 0-0 were quite common.

Here is the full list of the members of the '1,000 club'.

There is another way of looking at the highest scoring clubs in league games and that is to rank them by the average points scored per game. We were not in the least surprised that when we did that only one of the top entries came before the ‘Summer Era’. That was Wigan in 25th place and that came in the short season just before the ‘Summer Era’.

The two clubs who achieved average points per match over 50 were both non-English clubs who joined in the third tier but were clearly destined for a quick promotion bearing in mind the squads they had assembled.