fevnut's musings 2024/#23: Toulouse, Losing and Winning Streaks and Team of the Month

Toulouse

We actually spent the Saturday of the Toulouse game watching a match but it wasn’t in France and nor was it rugby league! Instead, we were watching Stonehaven cricket club playing against a team in Aberdeen. Stonehaven’s top scorer was their captain, my eldest lad. Stonehaven lost but at least they did score some runs! We’re sure those of you who went to France had rather warmer weather than we had to suffer in the North of Scotland.

Of course, we are all disappointed that we lost for the fifth match in a row but when we checked the score as the game progressed we felt a bit traumatised when we saw that we were 12-0 down after just eleven minutes and feared the worst, so we were somewhat relieved to see that in the end we only conceded 20 points.

It was very disappointing that we got nilled and a quick check revealed that was the first time since a Qualifier Super 8s match at home to Warrington in 2017 who beat us 68-0. We were also nilled the previous year by Leeds in a Challenge Cup tie at Headingley (58-0).

The last occasion when we were nilled in a Championship match was that bitterly disappointing loss to Halifax (37-0) at Summer Bash in Blackpool in 2016. A day when we were expecting to win! A bad omen was a loss at home by 29-0 to Whitehaven in 2015. In many ways that was even more unexpected than the Halifax match. We played Whitehaven four times that year and won all three of the other matches, including meeting in the Challenge Cup and the Championship Shield Super 8s. The Championship Shield match we won 42-30 and that was our very next match after the 29-0 loss to them.

But we don’t feel at all despondent about last week’s defeat. Very sad that our offence didn’t manage to produce a single point but it sounds as though our defence was much stronger than in our last few games. To put it into context, in Toulouse’s last three games they have scored 108 points and conceded none at all! They have improved very significantly since a poor start to the season when they lost three of their first four games, the losses coming away against Sheffield and Bradford and at home to Swinton. But they are now on a run of seven wins. It will be really interesting to see how they go at home to Wakefield on July 20th.

Not only was it our best defensive performance for some time but Toulouse's three tries were the lowest number they have scored since they only managed 2 away to Wakefield at the end of April.

Successive losses

As our dismal run of five defeats in a row has progressed we have been bombarded by questions about previous bad runs and a couple of weeks ago we revealed that in the 1947/48 season Fev lost 23 matches in a row. A stat that makes the current run seem paltry in comparison! And, anyway, we will have everything crossed on Sunday in the hope that this particular run comes to an end.

One of the questions we got asked was about when we last lost 5 in a row. Well, we lost seven in 2016, but those games were in the Qualifiers Super 8s and most of the matches were against Super League opposition.

The last time we lost 5 Championship games in a row was the last four of the 2015 season together with the first of the 2016 season.

If that all makes you feel despondent, sad, depressed or angry then just think about the start of last year and the joy when we won the first 13 Championship games of the season!

Team of the Month

Just opened our copy of the latest issue of Rugby League World. As we expected there are no Fev players in their Championship team of the month. Not surprising as we didn’t win any games! It’s the first time we can recall without any Rovers players in their selected team.