fevnut's musings 2025/#29: Structure Changes and Batley

Despite having beaten Batley 46-4 in May, we never thought that it would be an easy win for Fev last Sunday.

Three factors stood out to bring us to that view.

First of all, they changed their head coach in late June and brought in John Kear who has immense experience and is a very canny operator who is good at analysing opponents and producing game plans as a result.

Secondly, as a result of the above, while still losing most of their matches, nevertheless their performances have been gradually improving. In March they conceded 50 points against Sheffield Eagles but in the return tie, in June at Mount Pleasant, they beat the Eagles 24-14.

The third factor was their recruitment of players on loan. On Sunday, against Fev they had Aidan McGowan (Huddersfield fullback), Aussie, Tyran Ott, (Bradford scrumhalf) in their starting line-up and on the bench they had Jack Billington (Huddersfield forward) and Emmanuel Waine (Bradford forward).

What was particularly noticeable was how much stronger their defence was. Helped in part by Fev’s attack not being at our very best although there was a moment in the match that is worth watching over and over again. We are referring to our first try scored by Caleb Aekins from a beautiful delayed pass from Ben Reynolds.

We’re glad that we don’t have the task of picking a man of the match because there were several candidates to choose from. Caleb Aekins and Ben Reynolds as mentioned above but also Clay Webb and Ryan Hampshire. If we had to pick one we would probably have gone for Ryan Hampshire who was so alert and quick for the final try and was consistently good throughout the game. The one negative surprise from him was that he failed to kick a 40/20. Before the game we thought it was odds on that he would produce at least one when we were attacking downhill.

Our defence was good for almost the full 80 minutes and the one try Batley scored was from a lucky (from their perspective) failure to gather the ball on our line which unfortunately fell straight into the hands of Batley’s Ben White.

Footnote: Earlier this week we went to the big Sainsbury’s in Wakefield because there were a couple of items we wanted that we couldn’t get more locally. We took a look at their herbs and spices section being careful not to get in the way of a man who was already there. A moment later he turned and it was Ryan Hampshire! We had a good chat and he told me how much he is really enjoying being at Fev.

We were intrigued to see so many rugby league VIPs at the match. The ones we spotted were Garry Schofield, Karl Harrison Alex Walmsley and Nigel Wood.

 

Championship/League One Structure

We usually write fevnut’s musings on a Wednesday but this week we delayed it a day because we wanted to see what came out of Wednesday’s meeting of the Championship and League One clubs.

After the decision to increase Super League to 14 clubs next year there just had to be changes at the Championship and League One levels. Ever since Rugby League lost so much of the Sky money, followed by the decision to counteract that by taking lots of central funding away from the lower league so that the Super League clubs could be largely unaffected it has been very difficult financially for Championship clubs and virtually impossible for those in League One.

Wednesday’s meeting apparently agreed that we need a new structure but there is no decision yet on what that will look like.

What is patently obvious that it would be disastrous if clubs looked at this purely from their own perspective rather than what is best for all below super league.

So, what sort of structure would be best for the sport. Any structure will probably involve playing some clubs home and away whilst playing just one match against other teams.

There is nothing new in that. In days gone by the Yorkshire teams would play all the other Yorkshire teams home and away and then home and away against a few of the teams from Lancashire. In Fev’s first three seasons they played home and away against Yorkshire teams and home and away against four of the Lancashire teams. The chart below shows our cross Pennine fixtures in our first three seasons.

A)

Probably the least satisfactory would be one league of 21 clubs. Playing each other home and away would result in each club playing 40 league matches plus whatever matches they get to play in cup competitions. Far too many games for the players so it would need arrangements like the one illustrated above.

B)

Divide the teams into East and West Conferences. If that is what is to be done it would be far better to have equal numbers in each conference which is a problem as there are currently 21 clubs to be considered.

It maybe harsh but there is one club amongst the 21 who last won a game on the 16th of June 2023 and have lost all 41 matches since. That is, of course Newcastle Thunder and in that run of 41 defeats they have managed to score only 314 points (an average of less than 8 points per game) and have conceded 2,434 points (an average of just under 60 points per game). They are nowhere near the standard needed for a semi-professional team and to keep them going when they would be playing clubs much stronger than their opponents in the last two years. It’s sad as there has been a long held desire to have a professional team in the north east which stems right back to a Newcastle club that were in the Northern Rugby League for 2 seasons in the 1930s. Then, of course, Gateshead Thunder were brought into Super League in 1999 only to be massacred after one season in which they finished in 6^th place with a record of having won 19 of their 30 matches. We say they were massacred because the Rugby League merged them with with Hull FC who were in dire straits. It wasn’t a merger at all, they were sacrificed.

In order to produce the lists below we have assumed that Salford will no longer be in Super League and the three teams that will be elevated to Super League will be York, Bradford and Toulouse. That’s not a preference of ours but a guess as to what might happen!

We have colour coded the teams according to the leagues they are in in 2025. The problem is that the Eastern conference would be much stronger than the Western one. That would probably be made even worse if York, Bradford or Toulouse were not to be ‘placed’ into Super League.

Each conference would provide the teams with 18 matches, home and away against the others. In order to make up a viable number of games there would need to be some cross conference matches. Playing four teams from the other conference home and away would bring it up to 26 matches or it could be playing once against each team from the other conference home or away which would make 28 league matches in the season.

It may be that a problem would arise if, by whatever method, a club is promoted to Super League and a Super League Club is relegated. But that needn’t be a problem. We are old enough to remember when the Football League had a Third Division North and a Third Division South. In order to keep the numbers right in each division, one of the midlands clubs would move across so you would have a club like Walsall being in the Third Division South one year and in the Third Division North the next year.

 

C)

Another possible solution (retaining Newcastle Thunder) would be to have three conferences of seven clubs. Let’s call them East, West and Central. It could look like this.

This could work well if the clubs in each conference played the others in their conference home and away and all the clubs in the other two conferences either home or away providing 26 league matches in a season.

OUR CONCLUSIONS

Whatever system is decided upon will have to be a play-off system to determine the overall Champions.

If A) or B) are chosen then there would be ‘selected’ opponents and this MUST be done in a transparent way so that conspiracy theorists don’t have a heyday claiming that the fixtures have been rigged against their clubs and in favour of clubs that ‘the powers above’ have rigged it to be beneficial to a particular team. It should be possible to work in this manner as was done in the earlier days of Rugby League and is successful in the American National Football League which has 32 teams split into two conferences (AFL and NFL) and leagues with just 4 teams in each.

If C) were to be the selected choice then every team will play every other but again there needs to be transparency in the manner of how the teams a club only plays once are selected for home and away games.

Our preferred option is B). That would give many local matches with benefit to the amount of travel for fans and the cost of travel for the clubs. It should encourage a rise in attendances.

AS USUAL, FANS ARE NOT BEING CONSULTED.

WE WOULD VERY MUCH WELCOME YOUR COMMENTS SO THAT WE COULD THEN PRESENT THEM, IN ORDER THAT THE RFL HAVE SIGHT OF THE VIEWS OF FANS! THEY MIGHT WELL IGNORE THEM BUT AT LEAST THEY WILL KNOW HOW FANS THINK ABOUT THE RESTRUCTURING.