fevnut's musings 2025/#23: A Fev super-fan, Halifax and

 

 

A Fev Super Fan

We first met Mick Edwards almost fifty years ago, and became friends very quickly, although that initial connection was because we were both members of Ackworth Labour Party rather than having anything to do with Featherstone Rovers. Indeed, to begin with, our sporting chats were usually about Barnsley FC and cricket. But, then we saw him at Post Office Road and it was not long before we started sitting together in the main stand.

As season ticket holders we had reserved seats (and in those days we didn't have to pay extra for that). Gradually we managed to move our seats to our favourite position, facing the half way line where we thought you had the very best view of the action. It was a standing joke that despite the fact that we were very supportive of the wonderful improvements to the stadium through the fantastic work of the 'Stand Gang' a negative consequence was that the halfway line got moved and out seats ended up being slightly towards the Post Office Road end of the ground!

Mick had been ill for a few weeks and we really missed having him to chat to during the matches. Last Sunday we went home very happy after the good win against Halifax only for that happiness to completely disappear when we got a phone call from Mick's son, David, to tell us that Mick had died.

Mick was one of the most amiable men we ever met and he always had time for a chat with loads of Fev fans. There was absolutely no malice in him. Not even when he got run out in a cricket match which was entirely our fault after we had made a terrible misjudgement calling for him to run.

Our condolences and love go to his children and their partners, and his grand-children too. And also, to so many Fev fans who knew Mick and thoroughly enjoyed his company. We will all miss him very much.

For the reasons above the Halifax match has become a bit of a blur. What we do recall is our heart sinking a bit when Halifax took an early lead and again when they retook the lead early in the second half. But we needn’t have worried because, in the end, Fev were by far the better team and ended up with a well-deserved, comfortable, win.

There seemed to be much more flow in the passing movements with our backs, well provided for by the pack and, of course, our halfbacks.

It was another excellent performance from Jimmy Beckett. It is so good to have a dependable prop who also has plenty of speed. Also particularly worthy of mentioning were Ben Reynolds who largely controlled the game and Gaz Gale who seems to be returning to form and produced a spectacular finish.

 

Fev’s overseas players

Over the last few years Fev must have spent quite a lot of money bringing in players from the Southern Hemisphere. Some of those have given us great service and two from our current squad fall into that category. We are speaking of Connor Jones and Clay Webb. You might think that we have missed out Caleb Aekins. That is no slur whatsoever on him, but he doesn’t come into the category of the players we have brought in from afar because we signed him from Leigh.

However, there have been too many that we have brought in who have only played a few games for a variety of reasons. In 2010 we brought Larsen Marabe over from Papua New Guinea along with Jesse Joe Parker and Larsen only played twice. During 2015 we signed Reni Maitua, an Australian international, who was excellent but only played 13 games for Fev before being snaffled by Leigh. The same year we brought over Ryan Verlinden who only played 7 times. Then, this season, we signed Zach Herring who looked to be a good prospect but after only playing once had to return home on compassionate grounds. There have been several players who simply weren’t good enough.

Maybe the answer is to rely less on bringing in players from far away and concentrate more on developing our own youngsters like Fev have done for the vast majority of our history. If we are signing players from the southern hemisphere maybe a bit more research should be done before we splash the cash.

 

Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics

Understandably, there are some who think that fevnut is a statistics nut and over-reliant upon them.

We studied statistics as part of our degree at university and we are well aware of the insights they can show but also of how misleading they can be.

For some years now, we have provided Fev fans with charts showing the comparative match stats between Fev and our next opponents. But this year we have been troubled by the fact that these stats give a false impression often showing Fev in a more favourable light than opponents whose 2025 performances have been considerably better than Fev’s.

Things came to a head this week when we produced the charts comparing Fev and York and they scored Fev better than York which simply doesn’t match the teams’ performances in 2025.

A quick bit of head scratching and the problem became clear. Fev started the season with two Challenge Cup ties against amateur teams winning 88-10 and 68-0 and, in the process, scored 28 tries to 2 conceded. Those two games made a massive difference to the stats.

We decided that it would be far better and much more representative to exclude matches against amateur teams from the comparative stats. We thought it would make a difference to the comparison between Fev and York but were shocked to see how much difference it made.

Below are the Comparative Match Stats charts for Fev and York both with and without matches against amateur sides included. Just look at the bottom lines to see the massive difference in the overall scores. In future we will be excluding matches against amateur teams from all our comparison charts.