fevnut's musings 2024/#29: Peter Fox, Widnes and Feigning Injuries

 

Peter Fox Memorial Trophy

It’s a bit sad that, as time has passed, there are now quite a lot of younger Fev fans who are unaware of the incredible contribution that Peter made to Featherstone Rovers.

Born in Sharlston, into a great Rugby League family, Peter signed for Fev and made his début in 1953 and later played for Batley, Hull KR, Hunslet and Wakefield. He was a good player but that is not the role in which he became so highly esteemed.

His main reputation was a great coach, and many would argue that he was the greatest of all those who coached Fev. He had two spells as head coach at Rovers from 1971-1974 and again from 1987-1991. He coached several other clubs (as well as Yorkshire, England and Great Britain) but for today the important one was Bradford Northern with, again, two spells from 1977-1985 and 1991-1995.

He was an astute tactician but he also was willing to give time to talk with his players and also the fans. Having been born in London, fevnut learned so much about rugby league from talking with Peter and was so happy that he was prepared to explain so many things to us. We've never forgotten the time when Fev lost a match narrowly and could have won if we had taken several chances for easy penalty kicks at goal. Bemused by this we asked Peter why we had run the ball. His reply was "Chris, that's exactly what I am going into the dressing room to ask them myself!"

Peter died in February 2019 and, to our delight, Fev and Bradford agreed to inaugurate a Peter Fox Memorial Trophy. It was decided that each season one of the league matches between the teams would be played for the trophy. The first one was played on 25th May, 2019 at Featherstone and since then it has alternated between the home games for Bradford and Fev.

It was even contested in the pandemic year of 2020 when the match at Odsal came before the Championship was scrapped in March before the lockdown.

This year the designated match is the one at Odsal this Sunday and so far Fev have the exemplary record having won all 5 of the matches for the trophy.

We understand that the financial situation at Featherstone has led to a major reduction in the admin staff at the club but we, nevertheless, find it sad that there has been no mention of Sunday’s match being for the Peter Fox Memorial Trophy on the club’s website. Bradford have put a news item on their website about it.

In the photo below the trophy is being awarded to James Lockwood in 2023 by Neil Fox (Peter’s brother) and Sue (one of Peter’s daughters).

 

Widnes

We were unable to travel to Widnes last Sunday but we, of course, listened to the commentary on Rovers TV. We weren’t expecting Fev to win. Overall we have a pretty poor record in away matches against them and we have bruising memories of travelling to the then named Naughton Park in the late 1980s and experiencing matches in which in three successive seasons we conceded 62, 58 and 59 points.

So, to get to within a couple of minutes of halftime with the score still at 0-0 felt like a big achievement. And then Ben Reynolds picks up a loose ball and runs 50 metres to score a try. Half-time – 6-0 to Fev. Can we keep it up? 

And of, course, we did, with a penalty to take it out to two scores and a magnificent defensive effort, including a brilliant try-saving tackle from Ben Reynolds that resulted in Widnes being nilled. Since 1921 we have played them 121 times and that was just the second time that we have nilled them, the other time being last year! And this time we did it whilst being down to 12 players for a quarter of the match with Gadwin Springer being yellow-carded twice.

It was a wonderful performance and for the second week we played with great team togetherness. A strong performance from all the local lads and that was reinforced by a match winning player of the match performance from Ben Reynolds and probably the best we have yet seen from Greg Eden.

Footnote

It’s pretty rare for a player to be sin-binned twice in a game. We remember very well when, many years ago, we ended up spending hours having to amend our match data spreadsheets to take into account that possibility. We found, with a bit of incredulity, that last weekend it happened to three different players and two of them were players who have played for Fev this season. Gadwin, obviously, Brad England (now playing for Keighley) and also Luke Collins at Cornwall.

 

Feigning Injuries

Delighted to see that George Williams has spoken out about players staying down after a tackle in the hope of gaining a penalty and a yellow or red card for the tackler.

He said “It’s not the way the game is played. It does my head in. Loads have done it, there are too many to name but that’s not the way we played the game growing up and that’s not how it should be played I don’t think. It bugs me. I’m talking about tough players who are doing it too. It’s tactics, I’m not saying that they’re soft but let’s get rid.”

Well said, George. Maybe one way of dealing with it would be that if a player stays down, alleging a blow to the head, then they should automatically have to go off for 15 minutes for a head injury assessment.