fevnut's musings 2024/#17: Dewsbury, Fans need a Voice and a Milestone achieved

 

Dewsbury 

Right at the beginning of the season we wrote about how we felt about Fev in 2024 and explained why we thought that we would have less blow-out scores and more exciting matches.

You could say that a win by 46-12 is a blow-out score, especially bearing in mind that we missed out on several kickable conversions, but it certainly didn’t feel that way.

We often hear the expression that ‘it’s a game of two halves’ but this time it was the first half that was a game of two halves. For the first twenty minutes we were awful. Never mind facing sets of six tackles, our inability to smother the ball in the tackle led to so many off-loads from Dewsbury and that meant that we sometimes had to make about ten tackles in order to complete six.

Dewsbury’s first try was a bit flukey with a grubber kick bouncing off Paul Turner to give an easy score for Matt Garside. Their second try was an easy run-in for Owen Restall after Connor Wynne had been drawn out of position.

But, even though he wasn’t able to score on Sunday, Connor more than made up for his error with magnificent tackling during the rest of the game. On the other wing we also saw a massively improved defensive performance from Manoa Wacokecoke which augurs well for the future. That’s assuming that the 19 year-old is given more game time but we are rather pessimistic about that bearing in mind that he is now 4th in line for a wing spot after the signing of Greg Eden.

Manoa could be an important part of Fev’s future, but Eden is clearly not going to be a long-term part of the Fev squad.

Paul Turner’s long range second try has to be one of the candidates for try of the season. His acceleration was wonderful and there was no chance of any of the Dewsbury team catching him but we also need to credit the part Harry Bowes showed in putting him in the clear. The ‘trylights’ on RoversTV are worth watching for that alone.

So, it’s off to Barrow next. A long journey that has often led to difficult matches in the past but if Fev cam make a decent fist of the opening minutes we should get the win.

 

Fans need a voice

Back in the 1960s, fevnut was very involved in student politics. One of our colleagues in those days was a lad from York called Malcolm Clarke. Wind on 30 years and we were appointed to represent local authorities on the government’s Football Task Force where we were involved in particular in issues of the appalling racism in football at that time and also the way in which the Premier League were pushing up the prices to such an extent that many working-class supporters were being priced out of the opportunity to watch their team. At the first meeting of the task force, we looked across the table and there, representing the Football Supporters Association, was Malcolm.

That body does a great job in giving a voice to football fans and they have some clout, including a seat on the FA Council which Malcolm held for fourteen years. They are also much involved with the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Football Supporters for whom they provide the secretariat.

All the turmoil over the IMG grading system and the usurping of a higher and higher percentage of money received from selling TV rights has been hugely detrimental to Championship and League One clubs and has been carried out with no vehicle for our fans to have a chance to express our feelings about the governance of rugby league.

We are now, more than ever before, convinced that rugby league supports need a body akin to the Football Supporters Association. As ever the problem is the tribalism of fans but there must be many, like us, who are both fanatical fans of our club but are also feel strongly as fans of the sport of rugby league as a whole.

The problem is that our sport has moved so far away from the involvement of supporters at any level. Fev used to have several active supporters groups in the various parts of the area where support for Fev was strong. These have now disappeared, and we believe that is largely due to a feeling that there is no point because we simply won’t be listened to.

Well, if we don’t have an organisation for giving a voice to fans then there is absolutely no chance of fans having a say in any rugby league matters.

It’s worth taking a look at the website of the Football Supporters Association (thefsa.org.uk). Just imagine if we had a vehicle like this.

 

Danny Addy

 

Congratulations to Danny who last Sunday passed 50 points for Fev.