fevnut's musings 2024/#15: Halifax, Brad England and Halfbacks

 

Strange Game 

If I were a Fax fan (which I certainly am not!) I think that, in future, I would dread it if a Fev player got sent off. Most spectacularly, we won with a man short in 1991 but now we need also to include 2024.

Gaz was sent off in the 60th minute and, hearteningly, we then scored a try in the 65th. But two minutes after that Fax scored to bring it to 24-16 and the doubts began to start. However, three tries by our twelve players in the last seven minutes made the final score look very comfortable, but it really wasn’t as comfortable as it looked.

Turning back to Gale’s sending off, we have watched it over and over again on video and cannot see any justification for it being a red card. Gaz goes in for what looks as if it would have been a perfectly legitimate tackle when, at the last moment, Tom Inman juggles the pass and drops it whereupon both players make instinctive reactions and Gaz ends up connecting high which is as much caused by Tom Inman’s contact into Gaz as anything that Gaz himself did. We all know that Gaz is definitely not the sort of player to deliberately play dirty. Before last Sunday he had played 88 games for Rovers, never been sent off and had been sin-binned just twice, on neither occasion for a high tackle. We also understand that he was never sent off playing for Fev Lions. We cannot understand how this came to be a red card. Yellow possibly but it was patently obvious that it was an unfortunate accident. Rumours have circulated that Inman suffered a broken jaw but there has been no confirmation of this and the fact that Inman was examined by the doctor and then played on certainly doesn’t suggest that the rumours were true.

In the last twenty minutes 12-man Rovers scored 18 points. Not quite the 48 that the 12-man Rovers scored in the last 30 minutes in 1991 but a remarkable achievement, nevertheless.

Congratulations to Connor Wynne on his four tries. He started the season playing at centre and didn’t seem to be contributing a lot but since he has moved to the wing, he has been so much better. He has now scored 10 tries with 8 of them coming in the last three games. Remarkable. Well done, young man!

 

Brad England

 

Every team needs players who are rarely spectacular but put in immense effort and show a very high degree of reliability. Fev have been blessed with quite a few such as Richard Slater (although in his case, the tackling was often spectacular), Matty Dale and Tim Spears.

Brad England is beginning to show that he belongs in this group. A player who the team needs in every match.

 

Halfbacks

We have been distinctly unlucky with halfbacks this year. At the start of the season, it looked like Ben Reynolds and Thomas Lacans would be our regular halfback pairing and we were confident that this would develop into a very effective partnership.

Then we lose Ben Reynolds to Hull KR and Thomas sustains an injury that has kept him out for the last 6 games, and it looks as if it will be a few more before he is fit to return. And the news that Reynolds has now gone on a season-long loan to Hull FC means that he won’t be available to return to Fev on dual registration.

In consequence, in 13 games, we have now used seven different players at half-back and in seven different combinations. If you look carefully at our chart you will see that four of those pairings have played together in just one game. Amongst those who have played at halfback are Harry Bowes and Connor Jones (who are both much better hookers), Caleb Aekins (who is a much better fullback) and Danny Addy (who is a much better loose forward). 

We now have Paul Turner who provides some moments of sheer class but also seems to become anonymous at times. He has now played seven times for Fev, once as a sub, and in the six games in which he has started has had four different halfback partners.

This indicates to us that our current position of fourth in the league is a very promising start because things can only get better if only we can return, in the near future, to having a settled pair at six and seven.