The Phantom Horseman

Can you source this, because the only person I've seen suggest that is Mick Gledhill?

Yeah I get that but they've been heavily reliant on loans for much of the year and they struggled to hang on to many players from their 1st team squad last season. My guess is that most of their squad have jobs outside RL whereas I doubt whether, say, Chris Hill and Zane Musgrove are working shifts at the Top House to supplement their income at their new club.

So, we've made the play-offs, and the reward is a second visit in five days to Odsal. To say we're up against it on Friday is an understatement. Missing all three half backs, plus a couple more that failed HIAs at the weekend, and the guys who played big minutes on a heavy pitch on Sunday will have to back up and play big minutes again with us down to bare bones, whereas Bradford will presumably be able to bring in half a dozen who they rested on Sunday. I think all we ask is that the team have a dig again as they did on Sunday, where even Bulls fans said we were the better team for the first 70 minutes. It was such a different game to the one at our place earlier in the season. The head says that the quick turnaround for a team without half backs that can barely muster 17 players will be too much...the heart says this is a team that have battled for each other really well in recent months and will give it another good shot. I hope we have one more big effort in us but if we do bow out here, roll on next season.

Thank you. Those last ten minutes were certainly very different from the preceding 70, I'm concerned we won't be competitive for that long on Friday though with even more losses to our line-up and the Bulls with so many fresh legs to come back in. I think we'll have a dig again but things have worked out well from Bradford's point of view in their meetings with us this year, this will be the third game between the two teams and both Reynolds and Hampshire, who are the key to our team, will have missed all 3 games.

Yes but we're talking about spending this season.

To be fair I don't think there was any issue about the HIAs other than Hardcastle's incident earned a penalty but no other sanction for a high tackle (which if memory serves means it doesn't cost you an interchange if you have to replace a guy for an incident where someone was placed on report, sin-binned or sent off)), Connor Jones clearly took a bad knock to the head albeit accidental, and the two Bradford incidents both ended up more like cuts that needed sorting than concussions.

Yes that's correct, if we beat Bradford we will be away to York - but if Bradford beat us, they will have a trip to Toulouse and York will play the winners of your game.

I would be amazed if London have spent even half of what Oldham have, or indeed what York have.

Yes that's correct. Fev's 18th man James Glover came on to replace Connor Jones, who had himself replaced Josh Hardcastle, both of which were HIAs.

I watched the Bradford v Fev game again today and for me it highlighted just what a big role the interchanges played in the closing minutes. When Hardcastle and Jones went off for Fev in the first 25 minutes, they both failed their HIA and couldn't return, meaning Fev lost 2 interchanges, and what's more, neither of them were middles. This meant the normal rotation of interchanges for the middles just couldn't happen because we didn't have enough interchanges left - Jubb played the full 80 minutes and Beckett and Wilde didn't come off until the second half. This meant Springer, in particular, had to play bigger minutes than usual and he was out on his feet in the last 10 minutes, which Bradford exploited well. Bradford on the other hand were more fortunate with their HIAs (if that's not the wrong word, obviously nobody wants HIAs) - both Fulton and Michael were able to return and Bradford effectively ended up with 11 interchanges, including 8 in the last 20 minutes, and I think that's partly why they finished so strongly as Fev wilted in the closing stages,though Bradford do tend to wear teams down like that in the closing stages. I don't think any of that will help Fev on Friday mind you as we don't have all the fresh legs to come in that Bradford do, but on the day I think we were a bit unfortunate in terms of the final score on the balance of play over the 80 minutes.

London were promoted to the original SL in 1995 after finishing 20th overall (4th in Championship behind a 16-team SL) so I guess there's nearly a precedent after they finished 22nd overall (10th in Championship) this year.

Mike Eccles was one of the four nominees for SL coach of the year last year when London finished bottom, and there must be a good chance Paul Rowley will get nominated this year. The Championship coach of the year often goes to a guy who over-achieved, in fact I think Daryl Powell last year was the first winner from a team that finished top 2 in the regular season for seven or eight years, with Mike Eccles, Craig Lingard and Paul Crarey winning it after their teams finished 4th or 5th. That said, I think Applegarth will take it in a stroll this year, it shouldn't be close imo.

With hindsight I don't think it's an exaggeration to say the two HIAs might have cost us the game. Not in terms of the personnel who we ended up with in those positions - Glover played very well when he eventually replaced Jones (who had replaced Hardcastle) - but you don't get those HIA interchanges back unless the player returns to the field within 15 minutes, and therefore I think our coaching staff's plans would have been completely thrown off kilter in terms of swapping our middles. Both Beckett and Wilde had to play into the second half - Beckett only lasted a couple of minutes into the 2nd half, not sure if he was simply fatigued or if he had picked up a knock, and Wilde ended up playing about 65 of the 80 minutes (and Jubb of course played the full 80). I think Springer had to come back on earlier than Cooke would have liked - he had been very involved in his first stint and he was visibly out on his feet in the last 10 minutes, and both Keyes for his try and later Hooley waltzed past him, I wouldn't blame Springer for that, he had had a lot of involvement for someone his size in attritional conditions, you'd normally expect him to play 30-35 minutes these days but he ended up playing nearly 50 which for a big man in those conditions is far from ideal. The gaps that opened up in the last 10 minutes just hadn't been there in the first 70, they might have still happened of course but losing two interchanges inside the first 25 minutes that weren't middles caused us a lot of issues beyond the position they occurred in.

Inspired coaching from Cookey...having been the better team for 70 minutes he clearly sent out the instructions to let Bradford win so we would play them again on Friday (for the avoidance of doubt, I'm joking there...) Thought we had a proper dig under a great deal of adversity today until running out of steam in the last 10 minutes. Hard not to think that with Reynolds and Hampshire in the line-up we would have had much more penetration with all the good ball we had. Losing Hardcastle and Jones to HIAs in the first 25 minutes was clearly a huge blow and probably had a significant impact on how we used our interchanges, probably accentuated by the fact that two of our bench forwards (Akauola and Stevens) haven't had many minutes in recent months and Cooke was probably tring not to overplay them. Beckett I think didn't return after his initial 45-minute stint and we had some tired bodies on the field in the last 10 minutes. I thought we played way better than the score suggests given the circumstances, it's hard to see us getting much out of the game on Friday given the players that will be missing but despite the final scoreline I thought that was a performance that deserved a lot of credit.

Nope, halfback-less Fev outplayed Bradford for 70 minutes but conceded 3 tries in the last 10 minutes so you will host Halifax. Fev lost Josh Hardcastle and Connor Jones to HIAs early on and might struggle to field 17 on Friday night against Bradford.

Olpherts and Vuniyayaywa the two that don't play, Glover 18th man, Aekins and Addy at half back with O'Connor at fiull back.

You can say that about a lot of teams in the Championship though.

On a similar note another Fev one-year player has retired in Martyn Ridyard, he was one of my favourite players to watch. He had areas of weakness in his game (not the biggest, strongest or fastest or the best defender), but in my opinion he was without peer at Championship level in the last 15 years in terms of setting up passing movements and sucking in defences. Of course he was usually playing against us but in that one year at Fev it was no coincidence that Luke Briscoe broke the consecutive try-scoring record and Tom Holmes had probably his best-ever season as a half back, because it was Ridyard's ability to hold defenders in the centre of the field that created so much space down that right hand side, our attacking shape was good that year and it was largely down to Ridyard.

We've named our 20-man squad, basically all we've got left with the injuries to Hampshire, Turner and Tuimavave and the suspension of Reynolds, and of course we're not sure if Glover is fit to play. Bradford have named their 21 via the RFL match centre, they are missing one or two but most of the squad they have named have been first team regulars this year, presumably they didn't really have the option of naming a squad of kids etc as in the very unlikely event that Toulouse lose at Hunslet on Saturday a win would take Bradford into second place and give them a first-round bye in the play-offs. https://www.rugby-league.com/match-centre/match-preview/2298930

Doncaster held their player of the season awards last week which I thought was a bit weird, talk about drawing a line under the season before it was over. York were strolling through them in the second half of their game at the weekend, don't get me wrong York were very good but the defence for a lot a lot of the tries Doncaster conceded was feeble. You do wonder if most of their thoughts will be on Mad Monday this weekend.

Well, if they beat the team that has lost all 3 half backs, they'll probably get to play them again at home a few days later, as Doncaster look to have mailed the season in now. The overall evidence suggests that Fev with Reynolds and Hampshire are probably a better team than Halifax, but without both, they're probably a worse team.

What's the source? If it's Facebook, it's usually best to take it it with a big grain of salt.

Yeah that was borderline and you'll see that given as a penalty plenty of times. Oldham had been given a penalty earlier in the set for a tackle by Clay Webb that I thought looked less of a penalty than the Addy one, so maybe he was reluctant to give a second penalty so quickly.

I don't know but this fixture has always been scheduled for a Sunday. As far back as March Bradford were advertising that they would have 6 Friday night home games but this wasn't scheduled to be one of them. Rumour is Bradford will be also be choosing Friday night for the play-off game againsy us or Fax too though I haven't seen that officially confirmed yet.

I think you're probably right and certainly the 1895 semi it obviously was a long way from being a full-strength Oldham team. Injuries certainly played a part in the Championship year, my own team Fev looked a very different proposition once we had our 2 decent halves playing together, having been I think second from bottom after the first six games.