The Phantom Horseman

Hmm...shall we talk about Connor Carr, who scored a crucial try that helped earn Batley a draw against Fev whilst on loan? Not to mention all the loanees from Batley who went out to other clubs. All perfectly legitimate by Batley imo, but you presumably think different, unless you want one rule for your club and another for others?

What time did Leeds announce it and what time did Batley announce it? Batley put this tweet up this morning. Batley Bulldogs RLFC @BatleyRLFC ·6h We would like to thank @hooley_luke for his outstanding service to the club over the past 3 years and wish him the very best of luck as he moves to Super League @leedsrhinos for 2023.

This is a strange comment. Batley announced it on social media this morning, as did Leeds. As you say, time has moved on with how news gets out and it's very difficult for clubs to control this sort of thing nowadays and this move has been widely expected for some time. He's been very good for Batley, why not just wish him good luck?

Thank you. I seem to have a strange ability to remember random facts/comments from RL games 10, 20 or 30 years ago whilst being unable to remember what I had for breakfast this morning.

Nah, Batley must be favourites now having beaten us twice in a row and reached the final, looking forward to the plucky small-town underdog Rovers having a go at reversing the formbook and causing an upset

I'm pretty happy with this too. A couple of things stand out in my memory from his short spell as football manager here before in 2013. Firstly, the shapes/lines we ran in attack were tidied up as soon as he arrived, first receiver in shift plays taught to run straight and engage the first defender before passing etc. Secondly, the players really seemed to like him, I can remember quite a few really positive unsolicited comments from them at the time. Of course we (in)famously lost to that late Flanagan golden point drop goal in the semi finals, but Long and Danny Evans took over on the back of an away defeat at Swinton and we won our next 7 games, clinched the league leaders title and beat Leigh in the play-offs before that game.

Fiji have brought in a late addition to their coaching ranks...Brian McDermott getting straight back on the horse.

Better to be the right appointment than a rushed appointment imo. Still a good few weeks before the players will be back for pre-season. When we hired Ryan Carr we did a lot of due diligence in Australia (from memory I'm not even sure he was our first choice).

So the Championship season is over and we can now look forward to 2023 in the knowledge that Leigh are out of the way. Some stiff tasks still await next year, obviously. Toulouse are hard to assess at the moment as they are clearly losing quite a few players but it will be surprising if they aren't favourites, or very close to it, to go straight back up, whilst Batley, Halifax and one or two others will be fancying their chances too. It's possible that most of those who haven't been announced as re-signing by now will be leaving the club, though both Bussey and Lockwood were only announced as having re-signed in November last year. So there may still be negotiations ongoing, and players and officials may have gone on holiday precluding any announcements anyway. As it stands, we're a lot further on in terms of numbers than we have been at this time of year in some seasons recently, and of course we have a new head coach to find. A good time to draw a line through this season and look forward to next year.

He says in his interview that he doesn't have anything fixed up for next year yet coaching wise which might suggest he won't be back with us in that sphere.

Adam Cuthbertson's retirement from playing confirmed by Fev social media and others this morning, he's making one final guest appearance for Leeds next week.

I know our pitch condition attracted a fair bit of comment for the Leigh game in February, but The Shay has some long-lasting issues with their pitch and are at the whim of the local council in terms of fixing it, though I believe there was some remedial work done on it in June. https://www.examinerlive.co.uk/sport/rugby-league/the-shay-stadium-halifax-pitch-23133725

No but you were questioning the re-signing of a lot of this year's squad, as if the answer to not reaching the final was just to make wholesale changes amongst the playing personnel. The club has taken swift action in removing the coach. But you seem to think that it's worrying that we have recently announced so many re-signings, so how about some affordable and available suggestions of who we should sign who would be upgrades on Kheirallah, Leilua, Springer, Kopczak, Moors, Davies, Hall?

So you're predicting we'll make the play-offs with a first-round bye again, and be 2 games from SL? That's hardly the apocalypse is it?

Junior Moors was one of the best forwards in the Championship this season regardless of his age. I suspect that the other 2 or 3 players who are the wrong side of 35 won't be with us next season. In other words, you judge players on performance, not age. I take it Leigh won't be releasing Blake Ferguson just because he will be 33 next season? But as you are insisting it's "worrying", let's have a prediction of how Fev will do next season. Battling relegation? Mid-table? I'm frankly more concerned about the new IMG recommendations than I am about the make-up of our squad.

It was really interesting how this unfolded - after the 1895 semi final against Barrow on May 8 Bussey already had 23 points yet only scored 1 more point over the rest of the season (though he only played 8 more games I think). Meanwhile Moors didn't have a single point at that time yet nearly caught him. Well done Colin for running this again.

LOL, worrying? Fev have announced the re-signing of Kheirallah, Leilua, Springer, Kopczak, Moors, Davies, Briscoe, Ford, Hall, Hardcastle etc. If virtually any other Championship side had prised some of those guys away from Fev their fans would be delighted. Then in your next breath you're trumpeting the rumoured signing for Leigh of probably the only remaining out-of-contract player I would have liked to have kept? For months we have been reading that whichever team out of Leigh or Fev didn't get promoted would implode as a result of this season's spending, but now it's meant to be worrying for Featherstone because that implosion doesn't seem to be happening?

You've literally answered your own question with the second clause, you can add the likes of Sheffield a few years ago who basically recruited a full-time team of players that was lower quality than the part-time team that they let go. London too had to admit defeat trying to field a full-time Championship team despite having a very wealthy owner. Going full time is great but only if you have the funding to be able to afford a large enough squad of quality players. SL teams, even the ones that put very little of their own funding into their squad, can do it simply because they get spoon-fed £2m a year (or whatever it is now) from the Sky money. Leigh were able to do it because they have a very wealthy owner and also because they received a £450k parachute payment. The ridiculousness of the parachute payment was highlighted when Leigh assembled an almost-new squad with just 5 or 6 retentions. It's perfectly possible that Beaumont could have afforded the same squad with his own money, but even with their vastly superior funding and spending power to other teams in the division Leigh ran with a very small squad and enjoyed a fair amount of luck both with recruitment (the disciplinary problems that made Ferguson and Ipape free agents for instance) but also with a charmed run without injuries - a run of four or five injuries to forwards, which can happen to any team, would have seen them heavily stretched and perhaps reliant on DR again. This isn't in any way to have a pop at Leigh who have recruited a terrific squad, but just highlighting that it's really difficult for a Championship team to go full time on 200k central funding without lots of things dropping right.

Sam Eseh wins Championship Young Player of the Year.

A quick and orderly departure. We move on. UTR.

https://www.featherstonerovers.co.uk/news/club-statement-brian-mcdermott-gxt9A/

I agree with most of the comments on here, I do think that we lost that game in the middle and not with the half backs though. We repeatedly failed to bring the ball handler to the floor and allowed far too many offloads, and our discpline was especially poor in the first half. When you score 28 points at home in a semi final and lose it's probably not your half backs that are the main issue. For me although Morgan Smith has given his best every game in a Rovers shirt I can understand why he was left out, he has shown a good nose for the tryline but hasn't often shown the creative ability to unlock a defence and put his outside backs in space, Ford although he was very much rocks and diamonds yesterday did in the second half provide enough to suggest that he'd get Leilua and Briscoe the ball in space if paired with them regularly, one of the few positive things I took out of the game was that we might get to see that happen more next season, we need to make better use of them especially Joey next season and I don't think that's all been his fault. For me the decisions that didn't work were more those to leave out Bussey, in particular, and Davies. Easy with hindsight because Sene-Lefao had had a couple of good games prior to the Batley one but for whatever reason he was miles below that form and indeed was withdrawn after just over half an hour, you wonder what Bussey and Davies thought seeing Connor Jones replacing him at back row. Batley scored two tries in that channel in the first half and then another in the second with a size mismatch between Walshaw and Jones from a yard out.

Is that based on inside information or just rumour/guess, as we haven't announced anything about Jacks yet I don't think?

Yep, well done Batley. Deserved their win. Probably a great game for the neutral to watch, but not easy viewing for Fev fans. We couldn't step up on our regular season form in the play-offs and paid the price. Inability to put Batley's forwards on the ground and indiscipline cost us dearly, especially in the first half. We wouldn't have been remotely competitive against Leigh on that showing anyway. Mac's comment that he had failed in his mission in his post-game interview was telling. Long term I think we're still in a pretty good place but short term it's obviously a disappointing time. Like Mark says, roll on 2023.

Well done Batley. Deserving winners. Good luck in the final.