fevnut's musings 2024/#26: Doncaster, Great Performances and International Rugby League

     

Doncaster

We spent quite a lot of time thinking about how we could express what we felt about last Sunday’s game against Doncaster. Then into our brain crept the old saying “a picture is worth a thousand words” and we immediately realised what picture would brilliantly sum it up. It is, of course, Edvard Munch’s famous 1893 painting 'The Scream'.

So, what made us feel like that. To lose at home to Doncaster, who we beat 46-4 three months ago at their place, wasn’t, in itself, enough to make us feel the way we did. There have been many occasions when we have been saddened by watching Fev lose and there have also been a few occasions when we have lost and we nevertheless felt quite proud of our performance.

But both sad and proud were totally inapplicable this time. This time, we’re sorry to say, it was anger and despondency. Enough to make us want to scream! We hardly ever set up any passing movements and when we did it was laboriously slow with inaccurate passes. It just seemed to be endless one man drives.

Was that the game plan? If so, the most likely outcome is going to be more abject losses against teams we should be beating and fewer and fewer fans feeling that it is worth paying to watch. That, in turn, would probably leave us with an even further reduced playing budget for 2025.

Of course, injuries haven’t helped but we had enough quality players on the pitch to play so much better than we did. We do not in any way profess to have the knowledge and understanding to be a rugby league coach but we just do not understand why we play so many good players out of the positions where they are at their best. But maybe, if they are all under instruction to simply run at the opposition defence when they have the ball, it simply doesn’t matter what in what position they are theoretically meant to be playing!

 

The Best Performances at Post Office Road in 2024

In order to try and prevent the onset of depression we thought we would try and select the best performances we have seen at Post Office Road in 2024.

We have hit upon four of them.

The first has to be the defeat of Wakefield Trinity in the Challenge Cup which remained their only loss this year until Toulouse well and truly won against them last Saturday.

The second was the loss to Wakefield in the league at the end of March. A prime example of a loss when we could still feel proud of Fev’s performance. Although we lost 20-12 we were still in a position to take the lead with only six minutes to go.

Number three on our list is the 66-0 demolishing of Whitehaven. The Marras are no mugs and, although they are below us in the table, they have put in some very creditable performances this season including in their recent loss to Toulouse. Fev’s performance was full of skilful ball handling and enthusiasm, the very opposite of how we played against Doncaster.

We have saved until last the very best performance we have seen at Post Office Road this year. And it was in the clubhouse not on the pitch. It was on the evening of Wednesday July 17th when Red Ladder Theatre Company put on a performance of their play “We're Not Going Back”. It was about three women in a pit village during the 1984/85 miner’s strike and by the end so many of the audience were in tears. We generally associate tears with sadness but this was much more than that. The play conjured up so many different emotions, recalling the incredible part that so many women played during the strike. At the time we wondered whether those involved would retain the strength and skills they had learned after the strike ended. Would things return to ‘normal’? We now know the answer. We have a society in the former mining areas where women play a far more active role. Thank you to Red Ladder Theatre Company for providing us with such a memorable, thought-provoking and emotional evening!

 

International RL in Europe

International rugby league has burgeoned in Europe over the last few years. There have been some great competitions including the likes of Greece, the Netherlands, Serbia, Italy, the Czech Republic, Norway, Germany, Ukraine and several more. That is great!

But it seems to us that two countries still have big problems with being able to arrange suitable matches.

England have no opposition in Europe capable of providing competitive matches as has been shown by games over the last few years against France. But at least there are the World Cups and we have started to see touring teams such as Tonga last year and Samoa this coming November and a scheduled series of test matches in Australia in 2025.

France are in an even worse state. They are far too weak to compete against England but at the same time they are far too strong to play meaningful matches against the other European countries.

If we are ever to be in with a chance of winning the World Cup our élite players need more meaningful representative matches. We believe that the RFL should re-instate a County of Origin annual series and this time really make an effort to market it properly.