fevnut's musings 2025/#22: Hunslet, Played every Match, Rugby League Honours and Ludicrous email from RL

 

Last Sunday’s performance against Hunslet, the bottom club in the league, was unbelievably poor. On the field we had a team whose individuals are of a far higher ability than those that Hunslet could produce and yet we only scraped a 26-24 win by virtue of a penalty goal, with both sides scoring 4 tries.

This season our players have produced some brilliant performances but then, only too often, have failed to play to anywhere near their potential.

Unlike some on social media, fevnut is not going to slag off any individuals. Yes, some had a very poor afternoon, but we do not believe in attempting to shame them. Far better to praise where praise is due.

When we went through the misery of watching the match again on youtube, we felt that there were four of our team who were worthy of a bit of praise.

Both James Glover and Jimmy Beckett produced excellent line-breaks and speed to score fine tries.

Ryan Hampshire kicked another 40/20 and is a master of doing so. It is a very useful skill for Fev’s armoury. Ben Reynolds seemed to us to be the most consistent performer in the team and worked hard throughout the full 80 minutes.

 

It does seem to us that Fev are incredibly dependant on the galvanising quality of having Caleb Aekins at fullback. It has been noticeable that Fev generally perform less well when he isn’t at the back. That’s not an excuse. The rest of the team shouldn’t be so dependant on having him there. Of course it was a blow to lose Caleb, have him replaced by Calum Turner and then to lose Calum as well. Nevertheless, the team should have been more than capable of coping with that. So, we ended up with Gaz Gale at fullback. Has he ever played there before?  He definitely hasn't for Rovers. It was another case of having to use a player in a position where he lacks experience, but you couldn’t fault his effort.

Did you listen to Paul Cooke’s post-match comments? It’s good to have a coach who is so honest and doesn’t try to produce excuses for such a bad performance. He said he felt sour, that we got out of jail free, that we were pretending to be a rugby league team and that the performance was totally unacceptable.

Finally, one of the best performers on the field was referee, Tara Jones. I hope those that made misogynistic comments about her before the game are eating humble pie now! 

 

Played in every match in 2025

The first thing we noticed when we got our teamsheet was the absence of Connor Jones. He had been one of 5 Fev players to have played in every match previously. That now leaves four one hundred percenters: Caleb Aekins, Jimmy Beckett, Will Jubb and Clay Webb.

Knighthoods for Rugby League

The establishment is very upper class dominated and hugely reluctant to award major honours to working class people. Cricket and rugby union players are far more likely to be knighted. A few go to soccer players and, up until this week, none had ever gone to anyone in rugby league. At last, Billy Boston has been knighted which should have happened many years ago.

Are we going to have to wait another 130 years until the next rugby league player is so honoured? It seems to us that there are two prime candidates for receiving knighthoods NOW. If Kevin Sinfield and Neil Fox had played another sport and achieved anything near what they have done they would definitely be Sir Kevin and Sir Neil. 

And there’s another rugby league player that we consider to be worthy of receiving an honour although maybe not a knighthood. We put forward Mal Dixon to receive a CBE. To have led little Featherstone to Challenge Cup Glory and then got the queen to have a broad smile on her face when awarding him the cup surely merits such an award!

 

Can you credit this? Ludicrous 

Earlier this year the Rugby League announced a cap on the number of minutes a Super League player could spend on the field during the season with variations according to position and age.

Now, it has been revealed that an email has been sent to the Super League clubs by Tony Sutton (RFL CEO) reminding them that the rules are definitely in place BUT there will be no sanctions for clubs that don’t abide by them.

The fact is that our top players are often burnt out by the end of the club season which has a major impact on England’s international performances.

Maybe we could start by getting rid of the ludicrous ‘loop’ fixtures, but, oh no, the club owners want them and therefore they have to stay.