The Phantom Horseman

Yeah his ban kicks in the week after. Will miss the Bradford game and the play-offs, if we reach them.

"95% of people who visited our website say they'd come to watch us in SL". I really hope they aren't going to present that as part of the bid.

I'll be pleasantly surprised if it's as close as that. We (Fev) have been really poor in the last 2 games since losing Hampshire, the strength of our team during the good mid-season run has been having two good halves and when teams know they can focus on just one side it makes us much less threatening. There are likely to be one or two enforced positional changes for Fev and I can see this fixture being the reverse of the 1895 semi, when Oldham were struggling with injuries whereas Fev were approaching full strength.

Not officially. We probably don't have 21 fully fit players at the moment so being in the 21 isn't necessarily a guarantee of full fitness. Of course, clubs don't always reveal injury details because it makes things harder for their opponents to prepare for them if they don't know who they're facing (in similar vein, that's why Paul Cooke hasn't stated publicly who will start at half back this weekend).

The better argument for what? The survey just says "we are keen to know how much the town is backing Oldham RLFC," but are you suggesting they might try and use this in support of the SL application?

Ben Reynolds' case, unsurprisingly, has been referrred to tribunal after being given a Grade E designation for foul and abusive language to an official. Barring unexpected developments that will be a long ban (think 6 games off the top of my head is the entry point) so season over for him after this weekend, and possibly a carry-over into next season (though 2 pre-season games will be eligible to count).

If Reynolds gets suspended we are going to need two position switches not one for the Bradford game and the play-offs, if we reach them. For me it's a toss-up between Aekins and Addy this week, neither is ideal, but neither is anything else - we've seen enough of Connor Jones to know he isn't a half back and also Jubby's struggling with fitness, I don't know if O'Connor has played half back at all at senior level whereas we do know he has played full back plenty of times. Tuimavave has actually played half back in a challenge cup final albeit nearly 10 years ago but has there been any recent indication that he's going to return this season?

Nobody wants to move Aekins from full back, and nobody thinks he is better at half back than full back, but half back is the most important position on the field, if you don't have somebody who knows the calls and can direct the shape of the attack you can't do much other than one-out rugby, which isn't going to cut much ice at this level. There's certainly a case for switching Addy rather than Aekins, but assuming Reynolds gets a ban today, that would only cover us for this week, not next week, when we're probably going to need both of them at half back. At this level, Aekins is a 9 out of 10 full back and probably only a 7 out of 10 half back at best, but in my opinion we don't have anyone else outside of Reynolds, Hampshire and Turner who is even a 5 out of 10 half back.

Unexpectedly we've just announced a signing. Connor Barley on a permanent deal until the end of this season https://featherstonerovers.co.uk/connor-barley-joins-rovers-on-permanent-deal/ Interesting one this, he had some good games for us and some pretty ordinary ones too. I thought there was some raw talent there but also something missing, but he's only 20. Presumably this is related to Glover's injury (and also confirms that Tuimavave isn't going to be featuring). Not sure how it relates to the end-of-season deadline, maybe we had him registered before then just in case, but he's only played twice for us on DR this season so i don't think could be called up just on DR, then again they change the rules on that sort of thing so many times. It might suggest that the plan going forward is to play Bailey O'Connor at full back, Barley and Hardcastle at centre and Aekins at half back, as we all know that's far from ideal but none of the other options at half back (Addy, Jones etc) are especially appealing either. We're probably going to be playing Bradford with Aekins and Addy at half back but that's just where we are right now.

Indeed - 2019 for instance, from memory it was something like, fly out to Toulouse and beat them in the semi on the Sunday night, convoluted set of flights getting us back to Bristol on the Tuesday, then a coach journey to Yorkshire,fly out to Toronto 2 days later, play them in the Final on the Saturday.

The problem is you can say that about most of the candidates. London? Still no details about the supposed investment, poor crowds, often seems like a shell of a club. Bradford? Obvious issues with the ground and size of the playing surface. Oldham? spent 3 of the last 4 years in League 1, investment is relatively recent, have had a decent year but yet to record a top 3 Championship finish or reach a Championship/1895 Grand Final, crowds still moderate Doncaster? Onfield performance lags some way behind some of their rivals (not made Championship play-offs in last 10 years & spent much of that time in L1), crowds pretty ordinary, do they have the financial clout? Widnes? Onfield performance lags some way behind some of their rivals (no top 4 finishes since they were relegated 7 years ago), seem to struggle financially NW Crusaders - been in L1 for years and were a Grade C club at the most recent IMG rankings last year. Probably the only 2 clubs that don't have an obvious flaw to their application are York and Toulouse and even with those 2 you could have some minor reservations (eg crowds at York, and Toulouse just don't seem to be wanted by some of the current SL teams).

Paul Cooke said in his post-game interview that they would have to get Turner's knee scanned and "I dare say season's probably done."

No Springer or Jubb today. Looks like an 80-minute stint for Jones although he is ultra-fit and that surface ought to play to his strengths.

That sounds like Cookey, he has quite publicly stated on at least one occasion in a pre-game interview that if they lost a game on a Saturday (think it was at Hunslet) he'd have them back in training on Sunday morning. Then again he's also given them a week off when we have twice had blank weeks, personally I'm fine with all that.

This is literally squad builder, a lot of us are already doing this but at the fans' forum earlier this year it was said to be bringing in £20k a year which suggests fewer than 200 people were contributing. I'm not sure how you'd get that figure up especially in the current financial climate, we can't even get 2,000 through the gates to watch home games at the moment let alone give away money on a monthly basis.

I think people are barking up the wrong tree on this one. The crowd figure indicated (which was 3,400 not 3,600) was in direct reference to IMG points - 3,400 was the average attendance we needed this year to bring our average attendance over the last three years over 3,000 and thus upgrade our IMG points for attendance. That said, there is no doubt that the very poor crowds we have had this year will have had a significant negative effect on cashflow coming into the club.

There's also a lot of really duff information on forums, and some of that gets reported by some journalists too!

It already has done. All the main journos read the TotalRL forums. If you put it on here, you might as well ring the journos up.

Kind words Haskey. Mind you I've definitely upset one or two people in my time on here too but at the end of the day we're all Fev aren't we?

Was on the club's Facebook page and also on the club's X account. There aren't many RL teams these days that use the club website as their primary source of information,presumably at least partly because of the emphasis on SM engagements for IMG points https://www.facebook.com/FevRoversRLFC/posts/following-recent-companies-house-changes-the-club-can-confirm-that-paddy-handley/1259114109588511/

The club did issue a statement just over a fortnight ago relating to what it says on Companies House and why Paddy isn't acknowledged as a director on there.. "Following recent Companies House changes, the Club can confirm that Paddy Handley remains Chairman of the Club. His appointment as a formal Director needs to be formally ratified by an AGM, which hadn't originally been the case. This will be resolved at a later date."

We were second best on Saturday and were poor in a lot of areas, but you don't have to look far for the main causes - we committed 11 (eleven!) knock ons, four of them in the first 11 minutes, and conceded 7 penalties compared to Widnes' 3. That's before you even consider the timing of some of those knock-ons, eg the two that were very early in the tackle count near our own line in the 2nd half. We're not as bad a team as we looked on Saturday in my view, but we aren't good enough to be able to play significantly below par and still win against any other than the bottom 2 or 3 teams, we nearly lost to Hunslet the last time we played that badly at home. Hopefully we can get back on track against Sheffield next week and then have a dig against Oldham and Bradford. Two wins from the last 3 games would almost certainly still get us into the play-offs, but we will need to leave Saturday's performance well behind.

Yes and quite often it does get blown mid-play, but admuittedly on anecdotal rather than empirical evidence it does seem to get blown just as a tackle looks set to be complete more often than you would expect if it were completely random (if ie the timekeeper were looking only at his clock and not at the field).

The hooter went, Bennison was being tackled by 3 men, the Widnes players started celebrating and the Fev tacklers released him. 99 times out of 100 the ref would have blown for full time because the timekeeper normally seems to blow the hooter to coincide with when the tackle looks complete, but presumably the ref hadn't called held and he let play continue. In fairness Bennison was still trying to move forward when the hooter went so it's 100% on the 3 Fev guys who released him. Bizarre incident though, never seen that before

Team announced. Personally I think this is fair enough, something had to be done about the right edge after we were exposed 3 times in the first half last week and Gale is our best defensive wing. Wynne perhaps unlucky in relation to Olpherts but he didn't have a good game last week and Cooke has been pretty consistent in dropping threequarters after a poor game as Olpherts and Hatton discovered earlier this year. Am glad to see Turner given a chance at half back, Akauola being dropped isn't surprising, I think Josh is more useful and versatile off the bench than he is. I think this is close to the team I would have picked given the options available.