T'Other Side: Keighley Cougars

      

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 dual reg at Widnes and then made his Warrington first team début against Hull Fc in September.

2021 saw him play for 4 different clubs. As well as a couple of appearances for Warrington, he played on loan at Widnes, Bradford and Salford.

In 2022 he played one more match for Warrington and then signed for Newcastle Thunder.

Loan players and dual registration

None as far as we know.

 

The Fev connection

Dane Chisholm joined Fev from Bradford in the middle of the 2019 season, made a big impact very quickly and became a real favourite with the supporters. But in 2022 he seemed to have fallen out of favour with Brian McDermott, the coach, and went first on loan to London Broncos and then joined Keighley. He returned to Fev in June 2023 but played only 6 games and then announced his retirement at the end of the season. For Fev, he played 54 games and scored 28 tries, 146 goals and 4 drop goals for a total of 408 points.

Neil Lowe (second row) was a South Leeds lad but his first professional club was Fev and he made his début in 1997 at the age of 18. He played for Fev from 1997 to 2002 to 2004, the intervening year he was with Salford. After he finally left Fev he played for Doncaster, York, Keighley before going ‘home’ to Hunslet. He was a Scottish international and also played for the Great Britain Academy team, both honours achieved while he was a Fev player. He played 218 games for Fev, scored 71 tries and kicked just one goal which was in the second of those 218 appearances.

We remember well, as the 2002 season was about to start, a conversation with a Fev fan who was complaining that we had signed Ian Tonks from Castleford. The fan in question was asserting that Ian Tonks was Cas through and through and wouldn’t put in the effort for Fev. How wrong he was! It’s different being a plater to being a fan and there are a vast number of players who have played for both clubs and done so with distinction. Ian Tonks gave Fev eight seasons of excellent service which including being captain in 2004. He formed a stalwart front row partnership with Stuart Dickens and in total played 172 games for Rovers and scored 12 tries. He played just two games for Keighley, in 1998, on loan from Castleford.