The Phantom Horseman

Think we're all going through what psychiatrists call The Five Stages Of Grief Being A Fev Fan. We've done Anger, Denial and Depression and some of us are reluctantly trying to move towards Acceptance now. The club will be going through the Bargaining stage for a while yet though

Confirmed by the club. He's had a terrific career. Sad that injuries restricted his appearances with us but he still showed a fair amount of class when he did play.

Think both Wakefield and Cas will be looking on with interest (maybe even some of the more affluent current Championship teams), the likes of Aekins, Hankinson, Jones, Springer, Cozza would all not be out of place in their squads. Depends on what we are in a position to offer. In financial terms there are so many unknowns - we don't know each player's salary, we don't have much idea of which players are contracted beyond this year, we don't know the club's current balance sheet, we don't know how we're looking in terms of sponsorship for next season, so it's guesswork at this stage to try and speculate who we might be able to hang on to. Trying to put some sort of positive slant on things (and God knows it's hard at the moment)...I wouldn't mind if we managed to re-adopt our traditional underdog status in some way. The most enjoyable wins are the ones where you weren't expected to win, and going into nearly every game this season knowing it would be seen as a massive shock if we lost sucked some of the fun out of things for me, especially when the outcome of the season all comes down to 1 or 2 games in October.

Was genuinely just speculating about this, but it does make a lot of sense, good signing for Batley.

Luke Cooper has been announced as leaving Fev at the end of this season. I guess Doncaster is his likely destination given he's been on loan with them for much of the year but he'd be a great fit at Batley, local lad, good quality Championship player with over 150 games at Fev, a proper team player and really popular with the fans.

Depends on what his contract states in terms of having a relegation get-out clause. His name gets mentioned on just about every SL forum as a potential target though, young, British (so non-quota) middle, they're at a premium.

There was an article on rugbyleaguehub suggesting both St Helens and Wigan were interested in him, so we might face an uphill struggle to get him.

Wait, are Fev being lectured about aspects of their stadium by a Wakefield fan?

Again...names? Players of SL quality who will sign for a Championship club that's already spent to a max and can't guarantee a SL spot next year at this point? I mean, if you think Lachlan Lam will be tempted, let me know and I'll pass it on.

Indeed. As I'm sure you'd agree, it's okay to have a few top-end Championship players in a SL squad, but you need a core of genuine SL players in there too. If it's any consolation, there aren't any teams in the Championship at the moment with remotely SL-ready squads. Fev are the nearest by a fair margin, but as you have pointed out, there are a lot of ageing players in our squad, and if we did sign the likes of Watts, Massey etc, they would be replacing the likes of James Lockwood, Craig Kopczak and Junior Moors, who are all 36 or 37 but still amongst the better middles in the division.

But you could just use that as a reason for every club to spend more. Leigh are fairly close to being one of the top teams in SL this season, why aren't they spending more money to try and attract a couple of world-class stars to push them over the edge? Similalrly, should Bradford, Toulouse, Halifax etc also be throwing money at trying to get promoted? Maybe get a few bidding wars going until someone goes bust? In any case, you clearly haven't noticed that since you started doing these kind of posts, Fev have "improved their squad a little" and signed a number of players (Arama Hau, Dan Smith, Ellis Longstaff, Dane Chisholm), some of them from SL/NRL clubs, which suggests you haven't really been paying attention. But there's a limit to the players that a Championship club can realistically sign without a sugar daddy.

Where do you suggest ambitious Championship teams without a vastly rich sugar daddy do their recruitment? Especially in a year when the team that looks likely to be relegated has very little talent worth targeting.

This has been explained to you on numerous occasions Harry.

In terms of accessibility, I'd say that how easy it is to get to from the nearest point on the M25 is a key question, as surely the aim is to attract people from all sides of London. With that in mind, Ealing, a quick jaunt down the dual-carriageway A40 from J16, would have been more "accessible" for lot of people than the Cherry Red, which is a bit of a convoluted car journey from most parts.

On their forum, a Toulouse fan sugested "1,000, 1,500 absolute maximum" but it was reported as 2,430 in today's League Express. I've said it before but the reporting of attendances is going to become a hot topic (and it already should be) with the clear possibility that averaging over 3,000 will make the difference between being awarded a place in SL or remaining in the Championship. There have been a number of very questionable attendances in the Championship this year in my opinion, especially as we know that the IMG grading handbook specifically states you can't include non-present season ticket holders.

Here's a band named after* the favourite scoring method of a mercurial half back of the 60s/70s, singing a song extolling the virtues of shifting the ball wide to a legendary winger# . * possibly # again, possibly

In 1973, as a young kid who went to watch Fev won at Wembley, I was disappointed to find out that "Nice One Cyril", which made the outer reaches of the charts that year, wasn't in fact about ace goal kicker Cyril Kellett. But I was even more upset when it dawned on me that in Gary Glitter's blockbuster hit of that year the dodgy glam-rocker wasn't actually singing " I Love Newlove Me Love".

Good to see Josh in good spirits interviewed for RoversTV this week as part of the "UpNext" feature. Josh probably isn't one of the better-known players in general RL circles as he's never played SL, having gone from Featherstone Lions to Rovers, but for those who don't know much about him he's a massively popular figure both amongst his team mates and fans. Fev have brought in a string of high-profile, ex SL/NRL players in his position in recent years (Craig Hall, Thomas Minns, Kris Welham, Joey Leilua and loads of others) yet Josh has nearly always kept his place despite competition from "flashier" players, he plays massively above his weight.

Half time Wakefield 0 Leigh 22

Still is, Ford was supposedly attack coach.

Correct on both counts in my view, York did become a bit of a 5-drives-and-a-kick team during the latter stages in particular of Ford's tenure there, though people only tend to complain about those sort of tactics if they aren't winning ones. We've actually been a bit like that this year (and last), though the more positive terminology for it is "winning the arm wrestle".

Mark Applegarth well and truly throwing Ford under the bus by the sound of it judged on these quotes from the Yorkshire Post's RL correspondent James O'Brien when asked about his departure: "It was obvious it wasn't working. We've been pretty clunky in attack and look a bit afraid to play. I won't go into the reasons why. "I want to see the lads play without as much fear and being too rigid – getting to a point for this and that. That's not Wakefield, for me. I want to give us a bit more of a licence to play more entertaining rugby." Free of the Ford-imposed shackles, we can presumably expect a try-fest from Wakefield at home to Leigh tomorrow night.

Facilities, which includes everything about the stadium not just stand and pitch, only counts for 1.5 points. The new stand might take them up from, say, 0.5 points to 1.2 points or something like that (and that's being very optimistic), but it's not going to be a massive game-changer for them based on IMG's scoring system.

Interesting to note that a day on from this news breaking Wakefield still haven't announced it on their website or on their social media channels. Don't think it's much fun being a Wakey fan at the moment.

That does seem great news, does anyone know what the capacity is?