fevnut's musings 2025/#19: Magnificent Fev at Oldham, Championship and SL Players, London and Sky TV

 

 

This was the heading on TotalRL’s report of the game and then League Express had a picture of Gadwin Springer on the front cover.

It was our hundredth game against Oldham.

What a day! What a performance! In our opinion that was, by some way, our best team performance in 2025 and we doubt whether there had ever been a better team performance against Oldham in the previous ninety-nine games. Not even the two 68-0 wins (which we remember well) in 2012 and 2021. Those two were much more down to abject Oldham teams than the brilliance of the Fev teams.

What was clear this time was that we had a well thought out game plan, developed by the coaching staff, brilliantly executed by the team and that the they played with discipline conceding only two penalties, having no-one sin-binned or sent off, and as high a completion rate as we can remember. Here’s hoping that it will be a similar story at Wembley.

One thing that is very clear to us is that the coaching staff need to have in place a clear strategy for dealing with Liam Harris. He tore us apart in the final league game of last season and he is currently the top try scorer and points scorer this year for Championship teams, third in the table of top goal kickers and joint first for drop goals.

At Boundary Park there were approximately 1020 Featherstone heroes on Sunday. We’re so glad that we didn’t have the task of picking a man of the match although we certainly would have had Aekins, Reynolds and Hampshire in contention. All three of them were masterful. Caleb has been excellent every time he has played at fullback and it is clear that Ben and Rocky are rapidly learning how to work together and the whole team has lifted by having two quality halfbacks playing.

So, here are our twenty heroes:

 

But, as we said there were about 1,020 heroes and here are some of the other 1,000: 

The supporters were really great and it’s no surprise to hear the tributes paid to them by coaching staff and players in post-match interviews.

We weren’t in amongst them. We’ll do almost anything to watch games from the side rather than from behind the sticks. Despite the Oldham website saying that Fev supporters should be in the Jimmy Frizzell stand, we bought our ticket in the Joe Royle stand and went ‘incognito', with Fev shirt and shorts under other clothes. Having got to our seat it became obvious that we were a Fev supporter but we found the Oldham supporters to be very friendly and gracious in their defeat. A huge difference to sitting in the main stand at Odsal! For us, the only sad thing about being in the Joe Royle stand was the inability to get round and enjoy the post-match celebrations with the rest of Fev fans.

How amazing it is that a club from a little town like Featherstone puts together a sports team that is now on its way to a 7th appearance at Wembley! So far, we've won three of the six so let’s make it four out of seven.

The only time since 1967 that we have missed a Fev appearance at a Challenge Cup or 1895 Cup final was when it was at Tottenham and that was a step too far for someone brought up in London as an Arsenal supporter! The only time we ever went to a match at Spurs was when Arsenal clinched the title in 1971 (at the expense of Leeds United).

 

Super League and Championship players

It becomes more and more obvious that the two competitions are very different. There have been quite a few occurrences when outstanding Championship players have been recruited into Super League teams and failed to make an impression despite their great standing at their Championship clubs.

Two particular examples amongst Fev players are Stuart Dickens and Connor Jones who both joined Salford before returning to Fev not long after. 

Stuart joined Salford for the 2005 season having already played 212 times for Fev. But, in August that year, he returned to Fev after playing just 10 games for Salford. He then went on to take his tally of appearances for Fev up to 421 before retiring at the end of 2012.

Connor joined Fev from Aussie club Northern Pride in 2019 and made a big impact straight away. It was no surprise that Super League clubs took notice of him and Salford signed him up for 2020. He only made 7 appearances for Salford and couldn’t return to Fev that year because Covid had put a stop to the Championship season but Fev fans were delighted when he re-joined Fev in 2021.

As we were writing this we had a bit of a giggle as we realised we were writing about Dickens and Jones. This is a picture of a department store that used to be on London’s Oxford Street.

Amongst many other examples of outstanding Championship players struggling after joining Super League Clubs include Luke Hooley who was a member of the Bradford Bulls academy. Wakefield signed him in 2017 but in 3 years at Wakefield he didn’t get to play any games at all and went out on loan to Dewsbury and Oldham. He then had 3 outstanding years in the Championship with Batley before joining Leeds in 2023 but only getting 8 games in the first team and being loaned back to Batley. In 2024 he signed for Castleford and is still a registered Cas player but has only played 11 games for them, been out on loan or DR to Fev and Batley (again). This year he hasn’t played at all for the Tigers and in March went on loan to Bradford.

Amongst many other examples of outstanding Championship players struggling to make the grade after joining Super League Clubs include Luke Hooley who was a member of the Bradford Bulls academy. Wakefield signed him in 2017 but in 3 years at Wakefield he didn’t get to play any games at all but went out on loan to Dewsbury and Oldham. He then had 3 outstanding years in the Championship with Batley before joining Leeds in 2023 but only getting 8 games in the first team and being loaned back to Batley. In 2024 he signed for Castleford and is still a registered Cas player but has only played 11 games for them, been out on loan or DR to Fev and Batley (again) and this year he hasn’t played at all for the Tigers and in March went on loan to Bradford.

Lachlan Walmsley was superlative in the Championship as a winger for Halifax (68 tries in two years) and Wakefield, in the Championship, in 2024 (32 tries). Despite that, now in the Super League with Wakefield, he is struggling to gain a regular place in the starting 13.

Tee Ritson, another winger, started out with Workington in 2014 but his career really took off when he joined Barrow in 2019 and he scored 70 tries in 73 games over a four-year period. Nowadays he is a St. Helens player having been signed by them in 2023 but he has only played 25 times for the Saints (none this year) and scored only 3 tries. In 2024 he played some games for Swinton on dual reg and this year he has gone back to Barrow on loan.

However, there have been a few players for whom the opposite has happened. In particular two props come to mind.

Jamie Peacock came on loan from Bradford to Fev at the end of 1998 and didn’t show any signs of being a capable second tier player and Fev fans couldn’t see him making it in Super League. How wrong we were!

Alex Walmsley played for Batley. He made quite an impression but that seemed to be purely because of his size and it was hard to see his potential. He was then signed by St. Helens and quickly became a top performer and, of course, like Jamie Peacock went on to become a regular England international player.

It must be a really difficult task for clubs to recognise the Championship players who will be a success in Super League. The sad thing is the lack of game time many of them get when they do make the move.

 

London Broncos

 

We were shocked to see, on the Fev Fans facebook page, the suggestion of there being an RFL conspiracy to have the Broncos back in Super League. It obviously came from a total misreading of an article on the Broncos website which talked about aspirations to get back into Super League. The article also talks about working with the RFL to re-instate the academy set-up and that has to be a good thing for rugby league as a whole. They have a proud record of bringing through quality players from London and the South-East most of whom would never have made it into rugby league without that academy set-up. Most of them would have  probably ended up playing ‘Kick and Clap’. Many have gone on to become important players in other Super League clubs and even for NRL clubs. Mike McMeeken, Louis McCarthy-Scarsbrook and Kai Pearce-Paul are just some of them. Rugby League needs to be able to tap into talent in this area.

 

Sky TV

This week there has been a readers’ poll running on TotalRL asking what people’s preferred times are for watching rugby league on television. We were delighted to see Friday evening as the most popular choice but sadly Sunday afternoon is in second place. It is our belief that Sunday afternoons should not be continued when there are games in the Championship and League One. Clubs outside Super League have had enough financial stresses to cope with without taking away from potential attendances by showing Super League games on television when their games are being played.