fevnut's musings 2025/#04: Waterhead, Elderly players and Floodlights

 

The more we think about our Challenge Cup game against the Waterhead Warriors, the more puzzling we find it. It was the fourth highest score that Rovers have ever scored in a game and that led us to checking on our other big scores. Here are the top ten: 

You will notice that all ten on of these games were played at Post Office Road. The highest score a Fev team have achieved in an away match was when we beat Gateshead Thunder, in May 2007, 74-16 in a National League 2 match. Of course, in 2020 we beat Valencia Huracanes 102-14 but that wasn’t an official match and so it doesn’t count in any records.

fevnut has been fortunate enough to have been present at all the games listed in the above chart. But the only one of these matches where we felt inclined to applaud the opposition at the end of the match was last week’s game. In all the others, the opposition virtually capitulated which certainly can’t be said of Waterhead who kept on valiantly trying right up until the final hooter went. Their pack worked hard and their backs produced some slick handling movements.

It makes it really interesting to see how we will go when we come up against some much stronger opposition in the weeks top come. That will be the real test but, for the moment, we are feeling very optimistic. The whole Fev team were skilful, powerful and very committed. A wonderful performance from a team that included nine débutants. Jayden Hatton is proving to be a brilliant acquisition and we were really impressed by Sitaleki Akauola. Again, it will be fascinating to see if he can play like that against teams like Bradford, York and Toulouse. It was great to see a prop forward with speed and a nice side step!

We got into difficulties with try scorers. From where we were sitting everyone around us thought that the try in the 36th minute had been scored by Caleb Aekins so we were somewhat bemused when the announcer (correctly as it turns out) gave it to Clay Webb. It was only when we watched the highlights that we could see that Caleb had been in a clear position to plant the ball down but instead handed it to Clay Webb so that he could score his first Fev try. What generosity of spirit, a lovely gesture!

It reminded us of the time in 1993 when Owen Simpson made a long-range break and reached the tryline with no opposition players in proximity. He waited under the posts for Paul Newlove to catch him up and handed the ball over to Paul to touch down for his 50th try of the season (the 50 included tries in representative matches).  His final tally for Fev was 48 which remains a Rovers record for tries in a season.

 

Current Players born in the 1980s

We read with interest an article about players who keep playing into what might be deemed ‘old age’ for a rugby league player.

The oldest players to have appeared for Fev were Jeff Grayshon (in 1991) and Ben Gronow (in 1929), both at the age of 42. Both were prop forwards and Great Britain/England internationals. Ben Gronow was already 41 when he made his Fev début! 

It made us wonder how many players there were still left playing who were born in the 1980s and we found that, remarkably, there were 48 of them.

Chris Hill (currently at Salford) is the oldest Super League player and Ryan Hall is just 24 days younger than Chris Hill. Most of the oldest players are playing in League One bringing their experience to the younger players around them.

But then we realised that there was something AMAZING about the top of this table. You probably know that advert that claims that Red Bull ‘Gives you Wiiings’. 

Well it is clear that Fev air gives you wiiings. The nine oldest players in 2025 have all, at some time, played for Fev and there are a further seven in the list as well!

Floodlights 

There seems to be some confusion as to what caused the floodlight failure in the pre-season game against Dewsbury. It has been claimed that it was a wider power outage in the area, but recent statements seem to be less sure that it wasn’t the floodlight system itself.

But whatever the cause the vast majority of the Fev fans are very unhappy about the quality of the lighting. We completely understand that a full replacement of the lights would be at a cost that the club is not in a position to undertake at the moment.

Going back nigh on 60 years we were in our final year at university, and we were in a quandary trying to choose between three different possible options. One was to train to be a Drama and Maths teacher, and another was the possibility of going to work for the BBC. The third possibility was to go into the theatre as a lighting designer and technician after a very successful time with the university theatre company. In the end we chose the teacher training route which led, indirectly, to fevnut becoming a Fev fan because the best institution for what we wanted was at Bretton Hall and so we came to live in West Yorkshire.

The theatre work gave us some insight into lighting and our conclusion is that the floodlight set-up Fev have now is simply not being used to anywhere near its full potential. To us, it appears that there are two problems.

On many of the stanchions that hold four lights some of them are not working. In addition to that the lights are badly positioned. While it is true that the further away the lights are aimed, the wider the area they cover, but the trouble with that is that the intensity is diminished. We are sure that the quality of experience for both players and spectators could be considerably improved by having all the lights working and by a major re-positioning of where each light is pointing.

It shouldn’t be too difficult to cure the big problem with the lighting of the far Post Office Road end corner and it would be such a relief not to have lights being wasted, as one is, shining into the eyes of those sat in the main stand. It would probably help greatly if the lights down each side were used to illuminate that side of the pitch. Yes, there would be a cost to doing the required remedial work but it would only be4 a fraction of the cost of installing a completely new set of floodlights.

The flags above represent all the nations that, under current rugby league rules, members of the 2025 Fev squad have played for, or are eligible to play for.