fevnut's musings 2024/#36: York, Bradford and the History of Fev in Play-Offs

 

York

We never have, nor never will, claim to have any expertise in the playing or coaching of rugby league. What we do have, however, is many years of watching and loving the game with a reasonable degree of intelligence and an ability to make judgments which are not usually clouded by our passionate support for Featherstone Rovers.

Sometimes we get things very wrong but occasionally we are proved correct. In most walks of life one is delighted to be proved right but sadly there is no pleasure in looking back at what we wrote about the game against Dewsbury and its implications for what was expected to be a vital game against York.

We said after we had scored 50 points against Dewsbury that it was no indication of how we would fare when attacking against a team with a far stronger defence. We also noted that it would have to be a much better performance in defence after we had conceded two tries against a team who had, by a considerable margin, scored the least tries in the competition.

Sadly, our concerns turned out to be fully justified. It was a strange feeling at the end of the match when Fev fans all around us were so obviously unhappy even though the news had come through that we had nevertheless made it into the play-offs because of the extraordinary result in the match between Dewsbury and Sheffield.

Whilst not expecting to win, that excellent try from Josh Hardcastle in the 4th minute gave us hope, and then a moment of jubilation when Gaz Gale appeared to score a second try for us only for it to be ruled out for Ben Nakubuwai being ruled offside from Ben Reynolds’ kick. For a split second we really thought that Fev were going to go on to win and possibly secure a home tie in the first round of the play-offs. But it was to be shattered as the match progressed and some very weak defence contributed to all of York’s three tries.

 

Bradford

So, it’s off to Bradford for the first round of the play-offs and reminding ourselves that, only a few weeks ago, we came away with a victory in our league match there.

That’s a dilemma for us. Do we go or not? Had it been a play-off anywhere else there would have been no question, but, despite the win, that game in August was one of the most unpleasant experiences we have ever had at a Fev match.

It wouldn’t be so bad if we were able to stand amongst the Fev supporters, but health reasons mean that standing for a whole match is no longer possible. That means that the only possibility is to be sat in the main stand with the huge majority of people nearby being Bradford fans.

Let’s make no bones about it. Odsal is the ground we least like to visit. It is a nightmare if you are disabled. Add to that the unpleasantness of sitting amongst Bradford fans who spend the entire match hurling abuse at the referee and opposition players. Last time they deemed every Fev pass to be forward and every time Bradford had a play the ball they were screaming to be given a penalty for offside.

Because of the speedway track, watching a game there is like looking at it through the wrong end of a pair of binoculars. Particularly galling when you are used to the proximity of the action at Post Office Road. And there are further problems brought about by the speedway track. When we do go, we have to take a cloth to wipe the seat which is usually filthy and covered in that orange-pink dust. And so is the ground underfoot. We have a bag with us to carry medication, a fold-up walking stick and a clip-board to record stats from the match. At the end of the game the bag had loads of the dust on it which, when we picked it up, spread to our clothes. We showed the bag to friends the next week when we went to our home match against Toulouse and it still had some of the dust stuck to it!

It is with huge regret that we have decided to take the same course as many of our friends and listen to Sunday’s game on RoversTV rather than being subject to the unpleasantness of going to Odsal.

 

Fev in Post-Season play-offs

The first time Fev ever took part in an end-of-season play-off competition was at the end of the 1927/28 season when we had finished in 3rd place in the league. The play-offs involved the top four teams and we had to play 2nd placed Leeds away in the semi-final. What a start to our play-off history! We won but then were nilled by Swinton in the final.

There was a 31 year wait after that before Fev appeared again in the play-offs. Three years after that, in 1965, we made it again with 16 teams taking part and Fev who had finished 15th had to go to 2nd placed Wigan and we made a magnificent start defeating them 15-8 with 12 points scored by Don Fox.

In the 1970s the Championship play-offs were superseded by the Premiership Trophy (PT in the chart below) and the Divisional Premiership (DP). Fev won the Divisional Premiership playing against Workington in the 1993 Final at Old Trafford. It was our second Old Trafford appearance, having lost there to Oldham in the 1988 DP Final.

There was an extraordinary Divisional Premiership competition in 1997. All the non-Super League teams (from the First and Second Divisions) other than Doncaster and Prescot Panthers, who had finished in the bottom two places in the Second Division, took part. The 20 teams were divided into five regional leagues with the top two in each league progressing to the knock-out stage. Fev finished in 2nd place in the Yorkshire East League but then lost in the quarter-finals.

1998 saw the introduction of the modern play-offs to decide league champions. These have been played every year since except for the 4 years from 2015 to 2018 when the ‘Super 8s’ were running and 2020 when Covid intervened. Fev have figured in 19 of the 21 possible end of season play-offs since 1998, the only years in which they failed to make it being 2005 and 2008. Of those 19, 17 have been in the Tier 2 play-offs, the other two in Tier 3 (2006 and 2007) after Fev had been relegated to National League Two. As has usually been the case in the third tier, the team finishing top of the league have been automatically promoted and did not take part in the play-offs. In 2007 Fev won the Tier 3 play-offs to gain promotion back to the second tier.

Despite being Championship league leaders for 4 years in a row from 2010 to 2013, Fev have only won the Championships once, in 2011, beating Sheffield Eagles in the final at Warrington.

Here is a record of every match Fev have played in Post-Season Play-Offs.

n.b. we have excluded the matches in the ‘Championship Shield’ in 2015 when Fev qualified for the play-offs but they were only in the Championship Shield by virtue of finishing outside the top 4 places in the Championship! For the record, Fev won that competition beating London Broncos 36-4 in the final. We also won the Championship Shield final in 2018, beating Leigh 42-10 in an extraordinary match in which both teams were struggling to put together a full team and the RFL allowed them dispensation to include young players on loan from Super League clubs. As a result 10 players made their professional débuts that day, 3 Leeds players for Fev (James Barraclough, Tyler Dupree and Muizz Mustapha) and 7 Wigan and Saints players for Leigh!