fevnut's musings 2025/#11: Catalans, Halfbacks, the Strategic Review and Yorkshire

   

Many thanks to those who arranged for the match to be screened in the Rovers Clubhouse. We were pleasantly surprised by both the quality of the pictures and sound, and it was great that there were no interruptions on the feed.

It would have been nice to have got a win because Catalans and Acton & Willesden are the only two clubs who we have ever played in official matches to whom we have lost every time. We will never have the chance to set straight our record against Acton & Willesden who only spent the one season (1935-36) in professional rugby league but maybe, one day we will get to record a win, or even a draw, against the Catalans.

Realistically, it wasn’t going to happen this time. For a part-time team to compete against a full-time team is always very difficult and taking the field without any proper halfbacks made it nigh impossible.

It was great to see Connor Wynne back in the team. And that’s not just for the two great tries he scored. He was also excellent in defence and without him the Catalans would have won by an even bigger margin.

He has now scored five tries this year even though he has only played two games for a try rate of 250%. He should, from now on, be the first name on the teamsheet if he is fit and not suspended!

We were very interested to watch Paul Cooke’s post-match interview. A very honest appraisal which gives us growing confidence for his leadership in the future.

 

Halfbacks

Are we cursed? Last season we had problems with establishing any sort of proper halfback partnership.

On paper, it looked as if we would be much stronger this year with three frontline halfbacks and Calum Turner who is most experienced as a fullback but who has played at halfback in four of the last five seasons. In that time he was in the halfbacks 41 times.

But, as we all painfully know, we have lost both Zach Herring and Thomas Lacans, and Ben Reynolds is injured, and it looks as if he will be out for some time.

This year we have played 7 competitive games and used 5 different pairings at halfback.

It’s good that we have managed to sign Ryan Hampshire, and we look forward to when we get Hampshire and Reynolds playing together but it seems that we will just have to muddle through until they are both fit. Unfortunately we have several tricky matches to cope with before that happens.

We would really like to know the thinking behind the decision to play Addy and Aekins as the halfbacks in Perpignan. Danny Addy is outstanding at loose forward, but nowhere near as effective in the halfbacks. Caleb Aekins is a rock at fullback, an excellent defensive organiser, and an effective try scorer when he chips into the line having scored 5 tries so far this year.

It would be great if Paul Cooke would explain why he put them together at halfback. We hope it was a one-off experiment.

 

The Strategic Review

How many have we had in the last few years? It’s difficult to have faith in such an operation when some of the really important sectors in our game end up being either excluded or having very minimal input. We read somewhere that Nigel Wood had said that the review would be ‘club-led’. That has been the problem every time because the club owners more often than not have a blinkered vision which is about what is best for their particular club and very rarely look to the health of rugby league as a whole.

If the review is to be a forward looking exercise that comes up with ideas that will benefit rugby league (NOT just Super League) then it needs to ensure that the voices of the players, the fans and the clubs have equal weight.

Amongst the issues we would like to see emerge from the review are:

1.    A return to promotion and relegation

2.   The ending of the partnership with IMG

3.   A contract that clubs have to sign that would include, amongst many matters, transparent financial management, a requirement to publish attendances.

4.   A proper academy and reserve structure that would enable all clubs to develop their own players rather than all promising youngsters being rounded up by a small handful of clubs.

5.   A smaller restriction on the number of overseas players that each club can sign.

6.  An RFL structure in which final decisions are taken by an independent board but with regular, mandatory input from club, player and fans forums.

7.   A well thought through strategy for improving rugby league’s television contracts.

It won’t happen and we guess that, in the near future, yet another strategic review will be announced!

 

Whatever happened to Yorkshire?

Thank goodness for Hull KR who over the last two years seem to have been the only Yorkshire club capable of seriously competing with the likes of Wigan, Saints and Warrington. We wait to see whether Hull FC's challenge cup defeat against Wigan turns out to be more than a flash in the pan.

We became really involved in the sport of rugby league in the mid-1970s and it was very different then as indicated by this chart showing the competition winners for the ten seasons from 1976/77 to 1985/86 and the winners in the last ten years.

In red are the clubs from the west of the Pennines, in blue from Yorkshire and in green Catalans.

We also looked at how many times clubs had finished in the top 6 in super league over the last five years. 

If you look at the Top 3 finishers over those five years it looks even bleaker for Yorkshire clubs. Huddersfield Giants were in the Top 3 in 2022 and Hull Kingston Rovers in 2024. They are the only ones to have got into the Top 3 in the last five years!

Leeds Rhinos haven’t made it into the Top 3 since they finished second in 2018.

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.