fevnut's musings 2025/#12: Halifax, Peter Fox and social media morons

    

We don’t leave matches early because Fev are losing by a big margin. We noticed that plenty of Fev supporters did so, and we are not going to criticise them. In fact, we did, for a moment, think about joining them but decided we wouldn’t depart from our long-held principle.

It was a thoroughly depressing performance. In February 2023 Fev beat Halifax for the ninth time in a row but then, a month later they beat us by 4 points in the Challenge Cup and in August they beat us again, this time by 3 points, in a Championship match at The Shay. Last year we again did the double over them. You have to go back some way to find a match in which Halifax got a big win. That was in the Big Bash of 2016.

Last Sunday our defence was awful. But hard work by the players and coaching staff can usually fix up the defence. What was more depressing was our attack. We managed one really good pass to Derrell Olpherts which he finished very well and our only other try came from a very lucky rebound off a Halifax player that Connor Jones was able to take advantage of.

Of course, the main problem with our attack is having to play without any proper halfbacks. We find the team selection very puzzling. Caleb Aekins is a very good player but he is not a halfback. When you take him away from full back we really do miss his leadership and organisation of the defence. I’m sure, in time, Louix Gorman will become a very good rugby league player but it was just too difficult for him to come into the team at short notice and take over the organisation of the defence.

We spent quite some time trying to find something positive to say but the only one we could come up with was to congratulate Derrell Olpherts with scoring his 125th career try and his 500th career point.

 

Incidentally, Derrell made his professional début with Dewsbury in 2012 in a match against Fev at Post Office Road.

 

The Peter Fox Memorial Trophy

 

One of the truly great names of rugby league! When Peter died in 2019, Bradford Bulls and Featherstone Rovers got together and decided to play an annual match for a newly commissioned cup – The Peter Fox Memorial Trophy.

The first such match took place at Post Office Road and it was agreed that each year the trophy would be played for in a league match with the venue alternating between Post Office Road and Odsal. By a huge stroke of fortune, the 2020 match was scheduled to be played on February 16th which was before the Covid Lockdown so the fixture was able to be fulfilled.

Sunday will be the seventh time Fev and Bradford have met for the trophy but Bradford have yet to win it after 6 straight wins by Fev. 

Here are just a few of the achievements by the sides he coached:

1972-73 Featherstone won the Challenge Cup (against Bradford Northern)

1976-77 Bramley won promotion to Division One

1978-79 Great Britain beat Australia in a test match (at Odsal!)

1979-80 Bradford Northern are champions

1980-81 Bradford Northern are champions

1985-1991 Yorkshire beat Lancashire in the annual ‘Rodstock War of the Roses’ match six years in a row.

If you talk to players who played under him they show great love and respect for Peter. Ask them why and, more often than not, they mention the fact that he could be tough but he would always give his time to sit down and talk with them, explain things and help them to become better players. That respect that players had for him was an important reason why several players chose to move from one club to another to re-unite with him.

And it wasn’t just the players that he had time for. We had many chats with him when he was the Featherstone coach and he was always willing to answer questions about tactics that seemed puzzling. The coaches who will do that are very few and far between.

Peter and his brothers are surely the greatest group of siblings in rugby league. Peter wasn’t the greatest of players, but he was definitely a very great coach.

Don was a great player and I shudder every time people mention Wembley when his name is raised. Don’s 162 tries for Featherstone is the club record. He is also third in the list for most goals kicked and second in the list for most points.

And then there is Neil. What a pity that Neil never played for Fev! His career record of 6,220 points is, by a long way, a world record.

Here are the three brothers from Sharlston, from left to right, Don, Peter and Neil.

 

 

“Sack the coach!” 

It is both shocking and disgusting that every time Fev lose a match, people who claim to be Fev supporters get onto social media calling for the coach to be sacked.

It’s just as well that those inane people weren’t around in the 1930s and nor was there any social media.

In the four seasons from 1933-34 until 1936-37, had Fev sacked the coach each time we lost we would have had to appoint 136 different coaches, most of whom would have only lasted for one match! In both 1935-36 and 1936-37 we finished bottom of the league and during 1936-37 we lost 21 games in a row.

And while you are looking at the table below of those 1936-37 matches, have a glance at the dates column - 3 matches in 4 days! Not that uncommon with rugby league in winter when the end of the season would see a scramble to fulfil fixtures that had been postponed because of the weather.

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.