fevnut's musings 2024/#28: Batley, Touch Judges and 6th Place - The Race for the Play-Offs

 

Batley

Last Sunday we were treated to another ‘game of two halves’. We say treated but it certainly didn’t feel like any sort of treat at half time! Batley’s opening try came from a series of woeful attempts to tackle that gave Walshaw the easiest of long range tries. Compounded by goodness knows how many other failed tackles during the first 40 minutes

At half time we simply sat in our seat feeling very despondent. But then we got a brilliant try resulting from a great break from Josh Hardcastle followed by an exquisitely timed pass from Harry Bowes to Jack Bussey.

Now Fev were playing with real heart and the defence was hugely improved from that which we had seen in the first half. At last, there was real commitment and Batley just couldn’t cope with it.

After we got home we tried to understand what had happened and, in the end, we put it down to several local lads in Fev shirts who were proud to where a Fev shirt and seemed to imbue the rest of the team with their desire to get a Fev victory.

There were, of course, the two returnees in James Lockwood and Jimmy Beckett. James was, once again, the epitome of reliability and determination and it felt as if the rest of the team would feel ashamed if they didn’t give of their best alongside him. We wondered if James had said things at half time. Jimmy looked so happy (in the second half, anyway) to be wearing the Fev shirt again. His game winning try came from a single-minded refusal to be prevented from getting over the line for what was his first ever try for Rovers.

And then there were two more heroic local lads in Josh Hardcastle and Maddox Jeffery. A difficult choice but for us Josh was the Man of the Match but a really difficult choice between Josh and Jimmy Beckett. Maddox Jeffery, who started out at Fev Lions, had some brilliant moments, particularly in defence. The way he managed to get out of our in-goal area to prevent a drop-out was amazing demonstrating skill, strength and speed in one single movement. Let’s hope we get to see more opportunity for him when we are attacking.

Of course, long gone are the days when Fev teams were absolutely loaded with local lads but we do believe that a core of them and the commitment they bring to the team is a basis of a team maximising their achievement. It’s no surprise that the best Wigan, Saints and Leeds teams have always featured a nucleus of local talent alongside others brought in.

Fans often forget that the commitment to a team is not the same for players is not the same as the commitment of the supporters. We took a look at the number of Fev players, over the years, who have played for other West Yorkshire teams (often deadly rivals to the fans). Of course, for family and work reasons players more often move a short distance when changing clubs. For them its more about income and supporting family. That’s why having a group who are both Fev players and Fev fans is so important.

Touch Judges

Do you remember the days when a touch judge would raise his flag and walk on to the pitch when he saw something the referee had missed. It was, importantly, also visible to the fans. Nowadays we have the referees and touch judges miked up and it makes it much easier for the referee to ignore a disagreement from a touch judge.

There was a prime example in the Batley game. The referee awarded a scrum to Batley for a Fev knock-on to the complete bemusement of our players who were absolutely certain that the ball had been knocked down by a Batley player. From where we were sitting, everyone around us were also completely convinced that it should have been a Fev scrum. Some started shouting at the touch judge but we think that the touch judge did tell the referee that he had made an error, but the referee chose to ignore him.

Nothing wrong with using technology but let’s go back to touch judges raising their flag so that everyone can see that they have seen something because it would make it much more difficult for the referees to ignore them.

 

6th Place: The Race for  the Play-Offs

Fev got back into a play-off spot on Sunday but they will have to keep playing like they did in the second half if they are to have a chance of competing in the play-offs.

It’s that time of year when fevnut starts to publish our special version of the table which shows all the remaining possibilities. Early days and hardly anything is mathematically decided.

What we see is that Wakefield are way out in front, followed by four teams who are at least four points clear of 6th place. Then we have a group of six clubs who might feel that they are still in with a plausible possibility of gaining that final play-off spot if they can put a good run together.

So, we thought that we would put together a list of the remaining fixtures for those six clubs. We have colour coded the opposition teams: purple for those in the top 5, red for those fighting it out for 6th place, and the rest in black.