fevnut's blog

The Sheffield and Fev squads for Sunday have both been published.  We find it quite difficult to see the potential shape of the teams in the form in which the clubs publish the squads so we just have to use guesswork, along with the squads in their last match, to set them out in the traditional manner running from fullback to loose forward and then subs. 

  Oh dear! What a painful and frustrating match that was to watch. We kicked off and our defence looked great when we forced the opposition back after each tackle in their first set but then when we got the ball what did we do? Knocked on in our first set and unfortunately that set a pattern for the rest of the match. We were desperately missing Ryan Hampshire and let’s be clear we are not criticising Calum Turner who played well and provided a great pass to Gareth Gale for our first try. It seemed to be a psychological problem as much as anything else, as if missing Ryan had a negative effect on the psyche of all of our 17. Repeated carelessness with ball in hand, poor passing and lack of leadership. It even seemed to affect Ben’s goal-kicking. Several of us in the main stand began to wonder whether the problem with our performance was, in those green shirts, an inability to distinguish between teammates and the grass!!! We are still in 5th place but, when you look at ...

       Second time for this referee in 2025. In our opinion one of the best referees we have had this year.

 

      Head Coach:  Craig Lingard   It feels strange not to be writing about Mark Aston in this section! He had been the Sheffield Eagles head coach from 2000 to July 2024 with just one year out when he became the Eagles Chief Executive for 2006 and Gary Wilkinson was the head coach for that year. Now, in 2025, it is Craig Lingard. Craig was the head coach at Keighley from 2017 to May 2019. He then became head coach at Batley from 2020 to 2023 and Castleford in 2024. His entire playing career was at Batley from 1998 to 2008. He played 205 games, almost always at fullback, for them and scored 142 tries which is the all-time record for the club. After retiring as a player he became an assistant coach at Batley, a position he occupied from 2009 until 2016 apart from one year (2012) when he went to be head coach at Bramley Buffaloes.   Captain:  Joel Farrell   Joel Farrell has been appointed as the Sheffield Eagles captain for 2025, succeeding Anthony ...