fevnut's musings 2024/#16: They never scored, Dewsbury, Greg Eden and RL pundits

  

Players who never scored

In the last week we have been doing lots of updates to our player records after brilliant work done by Stephen Parker and Mark las Palmas had discovered previously missing dates of birth for no less than 178 former Fev players.

We were entering the date of birth for Bill Bradshaw who played 70 games between 1943 and 1956 when we noticed something rather astonishing. He was at hooker for every single one of those matches and yet he never scored a single try. That seems to be a reflection of the vastly changed nature of the role of hooker rather than on Bill Bradshaw himself.

In today’s game it would be inconceivable for a, so-called, hooker to play 80 games without scoring. Just think of Richard Chapman who scored 104 tries in 240 games or, indeed, Connor Jones whose record to date is 69 tries in 104 games.

It really is about time that the positional name of ‘hooker’ should be dropped. The vast majority of #9s in the modern game are far more like a third halfback and, more often than not, when a scrum is called, they are to be found at the back of the scrum (which used to be occupied by the loose forward) and they certainly don’t do any ‘hooking’. Positioning a hooker at the back of the scrum is a sensible move as they are particularly skilled at producing good, speedy, passes from a ball at their feet.

The issue of Bill Bradshaw playing 70 games without scoring made us wonder whether anyone else had played so many games and never scored a try. And he turned out not to be the longest!

You will, of course, notice that all ten of these players were forwards and, back in the day, the vast majority of tries were scored by backs and halfbacks. Nowadays we regularly get tries scored by props, second rows, loose-forwards and hookers. If the naked run had existed in times past for players who had gone a whole season without scoring a try, you would have got a whole group of forwards taking part!

Not included in the list above because he did eventually score is Luke Cooper. He went 61 games before he scored his first try and we remember the whole team celebrating. Nowadays he seems to have become a fairly regular scorer having already scored four for Batley in 2024.

 

Challenge Cup against Dewsbury

 

One of the most surprising things about our matches against Dewsbury is the record of Challenge Cup matches. In all competitions we have played them 173 times before we meet on Sunday and have had fixtures against them pretty regularly since we became a professional club in 1921. And yet, in all that time, we have only once been drawn together in the Challenge Cup. It was a staggering total of more than 70 years before that one tie was drawn in 1992. It just shows how the luck of the draw works when you bear in mind that, since Catalans joined the professional game in England in 2006, we have been drawn against the Dragons four times.

In that Challenge Cup match against Dewsbury in 1992, they were drawn at home. However, they have played a Challenge Cup tie at Post Office Road although Rams supporters won’t want to remember the occasion. It was in 2004 and they lost to Rovers, Sharlston Rovers!

 

Greg Eden 

There has been loads of speculation about the future of Greg Eden who has now been released by Halifax Panthers. A lot of the rumours are suggesting that he is coming to Fev. He is, undoubtedly, a good winger as his career record indicates. In 205 games he has scored 155 tries giving him a very impressive try rate of 76%. He is an excellent finisher and he has scored many long-range tries.

Despite all that, I hope that he is not Fev bound. This should be a time when Fev start to rebuild a team with plenty of youngsters and just a few older heads to assist the younger ones in their development. Greg Eden is injury prone and, at 33 years old, is in the latter stages of his career.

Let’s suppose that he did come. Who would he push out as a regular starter in our line-up? Would it be Gaz Gale or would it be Connor Wynne? Both of whom are great to have in our team and we really don’t want to see either of them marginalised. Gaz has been a great servant to Rovers and still has several years to give us. Although he is now 30 that’s still three years younger than Greg Eden. Connor Wynne is only 23 and, although he had a bit of a rocky start to his Fev career, he is now playing magnificently.

There’s also Manoa Wacokecoke. Manoa’s defensive frailties have been exposed but he is only 19 and should be seen as a longer-term project. He has demonstrated his ability to score long range tries with both speed and strength and given the right coaching (who better than Ian Hardman) could still develop into a very fine player. Despite those current defensive weaknesses we would want to see him in the team when either Gareth or Connor are unavailable. He will need game time to improve his defence and we see it as a risk worth taking.

In recent years we have seen a huge turnover in players at Fev. Since the start of 2021 there have been 63 new heritage numbers awarded. Yes, 63! It really is time to start building a team with youngsters who can stay with us and develop over a few years.

We have nothing against Greg Eden but we really don’t believe that his recruitment will be in the best interests of Fev. We need to think in the longer term rather than bringing in players who clearly won’t be around for long.

 

Rugby League Pundits

fevnut is an avid reader of various rugby league writers.

First to mention is Martyn Sadler. His weekly column in Rugby League Express (of which he is the editor) is always well worth reading and I tend to agree with most of what he has to say although I do sometimes find that he concentrates too much on Super League issues.

Then there is Garry Schofield who also has a weekly column in League Express. We used to both enjoy and get infuriated reading his page. We used to disagree with almost everything he wrote but it feels as if he has changed (or is it us?) and we find ourselves agreeing with him rather more often. We just wish he would stop filling up his page with pointless predictions of the scorelines in Super League. It’s a futile exercise. It would be far better if he just predicted the winner and maybe commented on whether he thought it would be a close match or not.

Finally, we want to mention Jon Wilkin. He has taken over the mantle previously held by Garry Schofield in that what he has to say or what he writes almost invariably we find arrogant and wrong! So, to be fair, we decided to reproduce what he has written this week which we thought was excellently written and very much to the point. Here it is:

Much has been made of the proposals put forward by the new stakeholders of rugby league, but the proposals were accepted by a majority of the 36 professional clubs.

With five pillars determining if clubs can make it into Super League or not, on-field success is now not a major player in proceedings.

That, of course, has meant that the London Broncos will be relegated from the top flight regardless of their success in 2024.

The Broncos scored just over eight points to sit in 24th in the IMG grading table at the end of last year, and Wilkin believes that such a concept is wrong.

He said: “Melbourne Storm were given time and with the IMG gradings system, which is so new and feels so alien, this was always the elephant in the room, the fact London were coming up and going back down.

“It’s fine when London are losing all their games on the field but if they win a few more games, it’s going to be a very embarrassing situation in the first year of the gradings.

“I support rugby league in London, it’s an incredible asset for us but there’s 11 owners who sit around the table and have a vote. They are very democratic, these clandestine meetings, and these people who decide where the game goes.

“I don’t have any say, the governing body doesn’t have any say in where the game goes, the 12 owners decide what happens.

“They decided to go down a grading route off the back of an IMG recommendation who have basically got a swanky spreadsheet that you put information in that tells you who’s viable and who’s not.

“The lack of clarity on the gradings system flabbergasts me. The lack of flex in the system flabbergasts me.”

 Wilkin explained further, claiming that some clubs are just ‘surviving’ instead of thriving.

“The lack of transparency, we’re fumbling into a situation where we have very vocal people like David Hughes (London’s owner) who are alienated by the sport and I refuse to say that that’s a good thing. There are clubs in our league now who are just surviving.

“They’re taking the central deal, they’re getting rid of their players and just surviving because they know they’re going to get in and if that’s right, then the sport is done. It’s finished.

“If we’re going to allow teams to get rid of players, just survive and limp in and we’ve huge investment from other clubs, where’s the fairness?

“We have to be striving to be better and stronger and to get more interest in the game. If we’re not doing that and if we’re just surviving and if you’re not doing that, it’s just a slow death. So let’s have a crack.”

What is missing however from Jon’s words is the perspective of the fans. The Championship fans, the League One fans, the London, Hull FC and Castleford fans for example. How must they all feel in this very dangerous direction of travel the Rugby League has taken.