fevnut's musings 2025/#25: Barrow, Hunslet and Overseas Players Quota Madness

 

The big question we have been pondering over the last few days is whether this was our best performance, so far, in 2025.

It was the highest points scored (48) and also the second highest points margin (36). The only higher points margin was 42 against Batley in May (46-4) but, when you consider the difference in table position of Barrow as opposed to Batley, we think you have to come to the conclusion that the result was the best we have achieved.

The nearest quality of performance to last Sunday wasn’t in the Championship but was the 40-14 win at Oldham in the 1895 Cup semi-final.

That match against Oldham came in our only run of four consecutive wins. And there lies the rub. We have been so inconsistent from game to game. We played very well, despite losing to York, in the 1895 Cup Final at Wembley but in the next game were woeful in only managing to beat Hunslet at home by 2 points.

As you will probably be aware, we have a policy of not criticising individual Fev players in print, however much we might do so in our own mind. Well, last Sunday we couldn’t have named any of our players as being worthy of criticism. Probably the worst lapse was the failed tackle by Clay Webb that led to Barrow’s second try but then Clay was excellent in every other respect, his performance far outweighing that one lapse. What a good signing he has been and we very much hope that he will be staying with Fev next year.

We thought that Danny Addy had his best game of the year up until now and his contribution had a major impact on the result.

We all know how good this current Fev squad can be. The problem in 2025 hasn’t been the quality of our players but the consistency from week to week. We are now in the top 6 but we will have to play consistently well for the rest of the year if we are to stay in the top 6 and get into the play-offs.

Hunslet

To put that Hunslet game into perspective, in their 3 games since that one they have scored just 6 points and conceded 174! Before they came to Fev recently they had lost their captain, Matty Beharrel, who had moved to Keighley, and now they have ‘released’ head coach who has been replaced, temporarily, by their assistant coaches, Kyle Trout and Michael Knowles, both of whom have played for Fev.

The only thing we can say positively about that 26-24 win against Hunslet is that it should provide a counter to any risk of complacency whilst facing the bottom team on Friday.

We have a bit of a soft spot for Hunslet, partly having been a teacher at South Leeds High School, now called the Cockburn John Charles Academy, the school whose building overlooks the South Leeds Stadium. But that is not the main reason. The club was almost destroyed when the RFL refused them entry to Super League in 1999 after they had won the Northern Ford Premiership Grand Final. They were excluded because their ground was deemed unfit for Super League. It may be small with only one side available for fans, but we would much prefer to go to games there than to ones at Odsal!

 

Overseas Players Quotas in SL

Apparently, Super League is about to increase the quota of Australian/New Zealand/Papua New Guinea/Fiji/Samoa/Tonga/Cook Islands players each team can have from 7 to 10.

We think that is madness. It would mean that a team could have over 75% of players on the field at any one time that couldn’t be considered for a Great Britain team.

We understand that top class quota players can help raise the general quality of a team’s squad and provide role models for younger English players.

But it will also lead to even less time that those younger players get to spend on the field and have a severely negative impact on their development.

It is also more than likely that only the clubs with the richest owners will be able to sign more high quality overseas players exacerbating the gap between the élite and the rest. Super League is already a pretty awful competition when you bear in mind that in 29 completed years of Super League only 4 clubs have ever become champions.

For the health of rugby league, the ongoing current review should, as a priority, be looking at ways to level up the competition. Let’s hope that Hull Kingston Rovers win this year and expands the pool of winners to 5.