fevnut's musings 2024/#33: Swinton, League Season finale and Sir Lindsay Hoyle

 

Swinton

We have been putting off writing about last Sunday! Didn’t really want to think about it. And we hope that when we have concluded this we can wipe the memory from the hard drive in our brain.

It didn’t actually start badly. After all the warnings about the problems on the M62 we decided to drive across the Woodhead Pass which is always a pleasure. As ever we hit a traffic jam when we got to Hollingworth but it wasn’t too bad and we arrived at Heywood Road in plenty of time. We always try to arrive early there as it is one of the two grounds where we enjoy having lunch prior to the game (the other one is Batley).

On the way back we made an awful mistake. Stupidly, we thought that the problems with the diversion off the M62 because of the bridge replacement wouldn’t be too bad during the evening. Wrong! We had the awful queuing to get onto the diversion and then it took over an hour until we were able to get back onto the motorway.

We’ve missed out on the time between that lunch and the journey home. Probably the worst Fev game of the year. All the good rugby and exciting passing moves came from Swinton. It just reinforced our view that halfback is a vital position and it is very difficult to play well unless you have two players filling those roles who are specialists in that role.

That’s been a repeated problem for Fev this year and we very much hope that the lesson is learned when it comes to recruitment for next year. We need proper back-up  halfbacks who can fill in when the need arises. Danny Addy has been excellent this year when he has been playing at loose forward. He is not a halfback which leads not only to the problem in the halves but also weakens our pack when he is not playing there.

 

League Season Finale

It feels as if a genius was at work when compiling the Championship fixtures for 2024. But even the greatest genius the world has ever seen couldn’t have come up with predicting all the results thus far and compiling the remaining fixtures so that there is so much jeopardy and reward still to come in the three teams (York, Featherstone and Sheffield) vying for the last two spots in the play-offs.

There are two issues to clear up here.

First, if Doncaster won their three remaining games they would get to 27 points which is above the current points tally for York, Fev and Sheffield, but because of the remaining fixtures for those three, they can’t all lose all the games they have left. And, anyway, the odds against Doncaster winning their final game (away to Wakefield) is huge.

Second, there has been some confusion over the current table positions of Fev and Sheffield. They have the same number of points and an identical points difference which is the 2nd criterion for determining table position. Many people thought that Sheffield would be placed above Fev because they have scored more points but the 3rd criterion is points ratio (points for divided by points against) and that gives Fev a tiny lead by 1.239 to 1.232.

That brings us to the remaining fixtures for York, Fev and Sheffield and what has happened is absolutely amazing. Each one of them still has a game left against the other two. And both Fev and Sheffield have their other remaining match against bottom club Dewsbury. York are in the weakest position because their other remaining game is this weekend and it is away to Wakefield.

One thing is for sure, the task of securing a play-off position is going to lead to some nail-biting games!

 

Well said, Sir Lindsay Hoyle

At the moment, he holds three important positions: MP for Chorley, Speaker of the House of Commons and (even more important) President of the Rugby League.

He will be stepping down from his presidency at the end of this season but, even before he goes, he has chosen to speak out against the direction that the RFL and IMG are taking our game. While attending the game between Oldham and Workington on September 1^st when Oldham were presented with their trophy for winning the League One competition which came with automatic promotion to the Championship, he spoke to BBC Radio Manchester and everyone in the game should be able to read what he said.

In case you haven’t seen it we reproduce some of his words here:

“I’ve always had a personal view, and this is a private view I have… my view is that you’ve got to have up and down, that’s how you stimulate the game.

“Oldham are on a journey here. There’s been big investment, they’re top of the league now and they’re going to lift the trophy today. They’re going on up to the next division.

“Where is the aspiration to make it to the top? Surely it’s got to be about the ability of players to win games to get promotion.

“It shouldn’t be because you’ve got money in the bank. If you take that up and down away, what’s the rest of the season to you when you’ve already picked out your top six teams?

“When there’s something to play for, I always think that’s the best initiative. Of course you’ve got to make sure you have a proper ground and we’ve got to make sure we’ve got standards, but it’s got to be a combination of the two.

“You’ve got to have aspiration, otherwise why do people bother investing?”

“Rugby league matters and I want to make sure that we get people like the Australians coming over and developing the game on prime time TV.

“Let’s show the world what a great sport we have. We’ve got this chance, so let’s use it. We can’t wait for the next 10 years.”

Well said, Sir Lindsay.