fevnut's musings 2025/#07: Doncaster, Catalans again, and Miscellany (including the Salford Saga)

  

We thought it was a strong start to our Championship season. Very different to the Cup games against amateur teams and this time we were able to see how they could perform against much stronger opposition. The defence was excellent, and our kicking game (particularly from Zach Herring) regularly kept Doncaster struggling to make progress out of their own half. The team discipline was very good and to only give away one penalty in the entire match is testament to that. Add to that a very impressive completion rate of over 90%. This is a team that are well worth watching and we really hope that the news gets around and attendances rise.

Particularly impressive performances from Jayden Hatton and Carl Webb with a brace of tries each. 

We had to watch Hatton’s first try on the highlights as it was in the one area of the pitch where the clubhouse blocks our view. Please could the club move the clubhouse back a few yards!

Roll on dry summer weather because the speed of our players and their ball handling ability suggests that we will be even better when we get onto dry pitches.

 

The Luck of the Challenge Cup Draw

Catalans! Again! Would you believe it. We have been drawn against Super League teams on 21 occasions and of these we had been drawn against Catalans more often than any other clubs even before the latest draw was made.

In our entire history, since 1921, there are only two club sides that we have never beaten. One is Acton & Willesden who we played home and away in the 1935-36 league season and lost both times and the other is … Catalans Dragons.

Apart from the 2007 match we have never been disgraced even though three of the four were over in Perpignan. We did particularly well in 2015. Despite fielding a weakened team which included débuts for three players (Luke Cooper, Sam Day and Ryan Verlinden) we lost by only two points and were actually leading with 9 minutes left on the clock.

We are a bit miserable because we won’t be able to go this time. We love spending time in and around Perpignan which we have done many times, usually for reasons other than Fev matches.

A message for Fev fans who are making the trip. We know that many of you fly to Girona and get hotels on the Costa Brava and just travel up to the Gilbert Brutus stadium for the match. The Perpignan area has some great beach resorts including Collioure (our favourite), Canet, St-Cyprien and Argeles. Collioure has some lovely narrow streets with arts and crafts shops and very nice eating places.

Miscellany

The ‘Salford Saga’ has been the subject of much controversy with so many pundits slagging off the club. We believe that the club have a lot to answer for in terms of mismanagement (as do many others) and their team selection for last week’s match was ridiculous even taking into account the sanctions they are currently under.

But we believe that the RFL themselves have been in dereliction of their duty to look after the interest of Rugby League. It was well known, a long way in advance that this match was to be televised on BBC2. A very important advert for RL, and being a free-to-air channel, one that has a much bigger audience than games shown on SKY.

What that audience got was a very bad advert for our game. Bearing in mind that Salford have found new owners and submitted some of what the RFL requires surely it would have been much more responsible to be flexible, to acknowledge that Salford are trying to sort things out and therefore to suspend (not remove) the sanctions until the time that the RFL have reached a point where they are able to make final decisions. If Salford fail to satisfy the requirements, then, fair enough, the sanctions should be re-imposed. Had the RFL thought more about the implications and suspended the sanctions we would have got a far better match being watched by so many people outside the regular RL clientèle.

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We were shocked by last weekend’s result between York and Oldham. York look, on paper, to have one of the best squads, and particularly spine, of any team in the Championship. Oldham are newly promoted and have made some good signings which suggested that they would be not far off the play-offs. I don’t think anyone (including in Oldham) would have thought that they would be able to massacre York by 50 points to 4. It will be very interesting to keep an eye on York and Oldham’s results in the coming weeks.

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In the first section of this article, we made mention of the condition of the pitch. And before we go any further, we want to make it clear that no blame attaches to the groundsman. Given the heavy use the pitch has had recently and the weather in the last few weeks, it would have been impossible to get the pitch into a better state.

There are some who believe that our pitch should be used less often for other clubs, amateur or professional. We don’t agree. It is a source of pride that Featherstone provides a resource for them to use when the need arises.

So what’s the solution to provide a playing surface that can be used frequently and that is in a state that is beneficial to the style of rugby that we like to see from our own team?

We are not generally enamoured with 4G pitches, but they are undoubtedly improving. One hears far less nowadays about bad effects on the players’ bodies. Maybe, just maybe, we are beginning to think that it would be better to invest in a 4G pitch that would make the surface good for our players in every match and also allow us to continue to generate income by hiring it out to other teams.

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Sad to see the departure of Zach Herring who leaves with the record, like many others, of just having played one ‘official’ match for the Rovers. His in-play kicking game was really good although we had been worried that he appeared to have a rather short fuse.

Some fans have suggested that we try to get Jordan Abdull over to Fev. That would certainly bring us the benefit of his renowned kicking game but his fitness in recent years has been poor and, surely, it would not be worth the major expense that would be involved, no doubt risking a repeat of the financial problems we have had.

So we are down to three recognised half-backs and maybe the club should think about trying to bring Abdull in, on a short term consultancy, to coach our halfbacks and improve their kicking games.

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Congratulations to Thomas Lacans for winning Our League's first try of the week vote. Well deserved! And now Jayden Hatton has been nominated for his first try against Doncaster. Get your vote in folks.

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.