The Phantom Horseman

Along the lines of: "we've had a couple of chats here and there, but I thought he showed a couple of positive signs there, and he's been rewarded for making some good choices and good decisions over the last couple of weeks, hopefully he puts the two together and stays in the team." Basically sounded like Ford was happier with him over the last couple of weeks than he had been previously, always worth remembering we only see what's happening on the field but not at training etc.

To be fair plenty of our fans were saying the same about Bradford last week! I do think when we're assessing our performance we have to take into account how the opponents played, and Doncaster were pretty dreadful yesterday in my opinion, their coach said their completion rate was 50% and if that's correct it's no wonder we were so dominant. I think sometimes there's a "good" time to play certain opponents, I think Bradford got that last week when we had had 3 brutal games against Wakefield (twice) and Leigh, as well as the players missing through injury (which they had too). Doncaster for me played much worse than they did against Wakefield last week, and presumably against Sheffield the week before when they would have beaten the Eagles barring a couple of shocking mistakes from kicks. Still, it was terrific to get such a convincing victory after a pretty shakey start (I thought we were moderate for much of the first half if I'm honest but much better in the 2nd half) and interesting to heard Fordy say there might be more players returning next week - Massey and Tanner perhaps? Ford's interviews are really worth listening to closely as you can tell quite a lot from what he says and the way he says it. For instance the comments on Wynne are quite revealing about why he might not have played much lately but also why he might have earned his place back.

Turner Day Jones

Trylights already up on YouTube

Fev get back on the horse with a wide-margin win at Doncaster. Eight changes from last weekend including returns from injury/suspension for Springer, Day, Bussey and it ended up a fairly comfortable win, though I'm not sure how much we can glean from it as Doncaster were really poor despite having eight ex-Fev players in their line-up. Oustanding performance from Paul Turner who really looked the part today, something positive seemed to happen every time he had the ball and he set up at least 4 tries. Will surely be a much tougher test next week against an in-form Widnes team who thrashed Halifax today.

Am going to hold off with my MOM for now but I'll be surprised if 2 names don't feature in just about every list with one of them a runaway winner.

Doncaster have I believe 10 ex-Fev players on the books...5 are starting, 3 on the bench, one is 18th man and the other is injured.

deleted - duplicate post.

I haven't seen the incident but there's no excuse for players not knowing they can't do that these days, there have been plenty of high-profile incidents. The grading for "Makes unnecessary contact with a Player who is or may be injured" is either E or F and thus an automatic referral to the tribunal, and the suspension range for Grade E offences is four to six games.

Nine ex-Fev players in the Doncaster squad, you can be pretty sure they'll be up for this one.

Spending three times as much as everyone else will do that for you to be fair, Fev had similar strength in depth last year on about 2/3 of the spend. Tricky issue for Trinity will be knowing where they are for next year because at this stage this looks the weakest Championship comp for many years (barring Wakefield). You could really do with one of the other Championship teams making a lot of progression to get some sort of gauge on your current squad members.

It's an interesting test for Fordy and the players this week. They have to respond to a poor performance last week and it looks like once again there are going to be a lot of changes to the 17 - we haven't had much option but to shuffle the team around from week to week because of injuries and suspensions but I don't think it has helped in terms of developing our playing style. I didn't expect to see Reynolds back but at least he knows our systems and is of course a proven goalkicker. At a guess the ones to miss out might be Farrar, one of Wacokecoke or Wynne, and then maybe Tomlinson and Roberts. That's assuming Springer's considered fit to play, though, which might not be certain. Maybe something like: Aekins, Wynne/Wacokecoke, Hall, Minikin, Gale, Reynolds, Turner, Springer, Jones, Kamano, Day, Bussey/England, Addy subs Bowes, Aydin, Fishwick, Bussey/England

Reynolds' return now confirmed. 3 other DR included, plus the possible return of Bussey, Springer, Day and Roberts. Still no Tanner or Massey, and Hardcastle and Albert are out through injury. https://www.featherstonerovers.co.uk/news/ford-names-21-man-squad-for-doncaster-rYhel/

Slightly different point, but Bradford announced that they would show a small operating profit for 2023. That, if replicated over 3 years, would gain them 0.5 IMG points, which presumably they wouldn't be achieving without the reported annual six-figure RFL subsidy, or without the "peppercorn rent".

Some Hull FC fans seem to think Nu Brown is off too. Supposedly unfollowed the club on Instagram etc. (Before anyone gets excited, his wage demands these days are extremely high apparently).