fevnut's blog

     

   Keighley and Fev have named their squads for Sunday, but Fev have only named 20 players, with Ben Reynolds missing from the list. Maybe Reynolds is awaiting a fitness test and will be included later if he passes. Otherwise we suppose it might be Harry Bowes at stand-off or Aekins at stand-off with Charlie Harris at fullback. 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 just have to use guesswork  to set them out in the traditional manner running from fullback to loose forward and then subs.

  Spin the Wheel and choose the next goal-kicker Our trip to play Thatto Heath Crusaders in the Challenge Cup was Rovers’ 3,750 official game since we became a professional club in 1921. As far as we can see something happened in that game which has no precedence. We are referring to the fact that Fev used SIX different goal-kickers. There are problems with establishing any goal-kicking records. First of all, drop goals were recorded along with penalties and conversions until the value of the drop goal was reduced to one point in the 1974-75 season. Secondly there was no consistent recording of failed goal-kicks until 2006. Nevertheless, we decided to look back through Fev’s previous 3,749 games to see if we could find anything to match the six kickers, but we actually looked for games in which four or more different kickers had been successful because neither Greg Minikin, nor Harry Bowes were successful with their kicks. We did find that there had been two previous matches w

       Head Coach: Matt Foster Keighley Cougars started the 2023 season with Rhys Lovegrove as head coach but he was sacked in mid-May and Jy-Mel Coleman took over as caretaker coach until  Matt Foster was appointed on July 11th. He had spent the last ten years coaching Burleigh Bears in Australia. In his playing career he usually appeared as a full-back or centre, starting with Doncaster in the 1994/95 season. After one season there he joined Keighley and stayed there right through until 2007 apart from a couple of seasons when he played for Sheffield Eagles. He made 231 appearances for Keighley and scored 125 tries.     Captain: Ellis Robson Ellis Robson is the Keighley captain, having signed for them after the end of the 2022 season. We guess that he must be happy to have spent the whole season with just one club. Originally at the Warrington academy, in 2019 he made his first grade début with Rochdale on dual reg and later played Dewsbury on loan. In 2020 he started the season on

  More Fixture Madness A couple of weeks ago we wrote about how starting the season with 6 weeks of cup competition games opened up the possibility of clubs having a whole string of away matches with the consequential effects on both club and supporter finances. That is what has happened to Fev. Unless we win our Challenge Cup game at Keighley and then get drawn at home in the fifth round of the Challenge Cup we will be either into the eighth (with a home tie in the Challenge Cup Round 6) or ninth week of the season before have a match at home. That’s one aspect of the problem but there is also another one that could be even more serious. What every club needs at the start of the season is regular matches to help the players and coaching staff settle into a proper game routine, and the importance of that has become even greater with so many clubs recruiting many more new players than used to be the case in the past. Let’s look at the dire consequences for Fev should the unthinkab

 

    

  Fev have published the 21 Man Squad for Sunday but we have no idea about the Thatto Heath Crusaders squad so we have just listed the 17 players who played for them in the Challenge Cup 2nd Round. We did have a look at the Thatto players listed on the RFL Match Centre but that turned out to be simply the first 21 players from their complete roster listed in alphabetical order! 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 just have to use guesswork  to set them out in the traditional manner running from fullback to loose forward and then subs.