fevnut's musings 2025/#15: Oldham, 3 tough matches in a row and Squad Numbers

       

Let’s all forget allegiances for a moment. You decide to put a bet on a sports match in which the home team is lying in second place in the league and they are playing against the team who are lying bottom but one. Now, imagine, what odds you would get on the team near the bottom of the table winning the match!

And that, of course, was the situation as we went into our match against Oldham. Oldham flying high and Fev in the doldrums. So, why on earth did we get comments from some so-called Fev fans complaining about our performance?

We lost, but what a game we made of it scoring six tries to Oldham’s five and it was only problems with goal-kicking that prevented us from winning. Far from complaining, we thought it was a truly uplifting performance and a very exciting match.

In League Express, the headline over the match report was “Roughyeds win a thriller” and the reporter goes on to describe it as “an absolute cracker of a contest”.

The result was not what we wanted, but it was definitely the best match so far in 2025.

If Fev go on improving like that we should end up in the top half of the table. The only real concern we had was over the fitness of Ben Reynolds who spent most of the second half limping, although he gave his all whenever he had the ball.

We nearly brough it back to a draw when Ryan Hampshire made a valiant attempt to kick a penalty from within the Fev half and managed to get the distance but not quite the accuracy.

It brought back memories of a match against Warrington at Post Office Road in 1989. The scores were tied with hardly any time left. Fev were awarded a penalty, but Deryck Fox missed although ball went dead so Warrington had to drop out from the ‘20’. The drop-out cleared the half-way line but Deryck Fox caught it as the hooter sounded and promptly kicked a drop-goal from within our own half of the field to produce a 15-14 win. Incidentally, it was his third successful drop goal of the match. Happy memories!

Back to the Oldham match. We were glad to see that League Express named Josh Hardcastle as Fev’s man of the match. We would have done the same. He’s a player who rarely stands out but always provides the team with 100% commitment, an invaluable asset that every team needs. Able to fit in equally well at centre or second row, his versatility can often enable a reshaping of the team when a player is injured.

 

 

 

Three very tough matches in a row

 

We came ever so close to beating the team lying second in the Championship, Now, on Good Friday, we are faced with York who are in 5th place. That is a bit misleading as they started the season poorly but have now won 4 in a row. Like Fev they suffered from halfback injury with Ata Hingano only returning last weekend after missing the previous three. Their halfback pairing of Ata Hingano and Liam Harris is undoubtedly one of the best in the Championship but so is Fev’s Ben Reynolds and Ryan Hampshire. Let’s hope that Ben is back to full fitness soon because he looked a long way off at Oldham.

On the Saturday after the York game, we are faced with Toulouse who are in 3rd place. They have won 4 out of their last 5 but can be inconsistent as witnessed by them losing to Doncaster recently.

It is very ironic that Fev’s highest ever scores in League games were against York (92-2 in 2001) and Toulouse (90-10 in 2011)! We’d be very happy indeed with beating them both by just one point this year.

 

 

Squad Numbers

 

When the 2025 squad numbers were announced we were both disappointed that Josh was given the number 20 shirt which suggested that he would be in a battle to even get on the bench.

Nevertheless, his class and injuries to others have meant that he has played in 9 out of our 11 games in 2025 and 8 of those were in the starting team.

It’s not the first time that players at Fev have been given inappropriate squad numbers.

In 2010 Daryl Powell signed Liam Finn and gave him the number 9 shirt suggesting that he intended to play Liam at hooker.

Sure enough, in the first two games Liam played at hooker but by the 3rd game he was moved into the halves and Liam and Kyle Briggs played together as our halfback pair for 24 out of the total of 28 matches. What we would give for a pair of fit halfbacks playing together this year!

Another surprise squad number was awarded by Jon Sharp in 2016. It had been announced that Danny Craven was coming to Fev, on loan, for the entire season. There was shock and consternation amongst Fev supporters when Danny was given the number 1 shirt and Ian Hardman was ‘relegated’ to number 15. For the first match of the year Danny was at fullback and Ian was on the bench. That arrangement was even shorter-lived than Liam playing at hooker. The very next week Ian was at fullback and remained there throughout the rest of the season except for a couple of periods when he was injured.

There’s a simple way to get over silly squad numbers, get rid of them! Much better for fans to be able to see a number 11 shirt and know that player is in the second row and that is particularly true of opposition teams. It is so very difficult to see the shape of  team with players of an opposition team when the numbers on their back give no clue to their position.

 

 

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.