fevnut's blog

 

  The Fev and Bradford squads for Sunday have both been published although the Bradford squad was obtained from the RFL Match Centre. We will amend that if necessary when we see it officially from Bradford themselves. 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.   

  The Question In the chart below you will find a list of the other clubs and the seasons that 5 of our present squad have played for. If a player has played for the other club on loan the season is shown in red and if they played on dual registration the season is shown in pink . Can you identify these current Fev players? N.B. Please do not write the answers in by using 'reply' on facebook or 'quote' on Fev Fans page of TotalRL.com. We have been told by some readers that doing so spoils their enjoyment of working them out for themselves. We will provide you all with the answers next week! 

      

     Head Coach: Brian Noble   We suspect that the appointment of Brian Noble as head coach of Bradford in 2025 took may people by surprise because it was assumed that his work in such a role had finished many years ago. In all the years that we have been writing little profiles of opposition head coaches, both in fevnut’s blog and earlier in the Rovers match day programme, we don’t think we have ever before, done it for a coach with so many honours to his name. While he was Bradford head coach between 2001 and 2006 they were Grand Final winners in 2001, 2003 and 2005, they won the Challenge Cup in 2003 and won the World Club Challenge in 2002, 2004 and 2006. His coaching career also included time as head coach at Wigan, Crusaders RL and Salford as well as being the head coach of the Great Britain team from 2004 until 2006. In 2004 he received the International Federation award as the coach of the year. As a player, he was the Bradford Northern hooker from 1979 until...

  As we drove to Post Office Road for the match it was hard to feel optimistic. It was going to be a weakened Fev team with, yet again, having to draft a player in to the halves who wasn’t a specialist in that position and we were facing an Oldham side who have been able to considerably strengthen their squad in the last few weeks with three recruited from Salford and also Morgan Smith from Sheffield. As we walked into the ground we got the teamsheet and were relieved to see that Ryan Brierley wasn’t playing. We were also glad to see that Paul Cooke had gone for Addy at halfback and left Aekins in his customary fullback position. A good move we thought as we had the players to cover in the pack for Addy but we would have struggled without Caleb organising the defence. Having said that, we had been far from happy with Danny Addy’s showing in the halves earlier in the season, but, as often is the case, we were proved wrong, and he had a really good game with some deft passes and ...