Match Thread: Championship Round 15, Featherstone Rovers v Toulouse Sunday-1st-August-2021

[Fevrover]

17 minutes ago, sentoffagain2 said:

Thats what i was thinking it's happened twice to me when stood behind the sticks.The other time was when we played Leeds in the middle eights.When they kicked off for the second half down i went.You may be right thank's.

Makes more sense for a while at least.

[J Phil Loxton]

4 hours ago, Piggy's mate said:

Fev lost by 17 and Batley lost to Toulouse by 20, hardly a blow out  and we scored twice something Fev couldn't do...

 

 

See you Sunday...

It was just that Houles said it was their first real test. So he might be trying to say he let you score two tries I let my wife beat me 6-0 at tennis once when she was six months pregnant. Some similarities there PM. Seriously though it will be a good match at Batley. Two teams playing really well.

[Andrew Vause]

14 hours ago, J Phil Loxton said:

One has to consider some of our players had come back from covid issues after very little training. Can't remember Toulouse making many if any breaks between the twenty's. When they ventured into our twenty helped with penalties and repeat sets they had the guile to put on the points. The atmosphere was brilliant. 4021 fans with zero away support. Just hope the new fans give the players another chance to redeem themselves. They deserve it. Well done Toulouse. Best side won.

You may be surprised now how much training players have to do to come back from Covid under the new protocol. The players are given set targets on re-introduction to training after self isolation. If each target is met fitness wise they progress to the next target which is ramped up until all the protocols have been met. The player can then be allowed back into the team fold. If any targets are not met the player's training is reset to stage 1 again. The reason this is being done is to minimise the risk of players returning that may have long covid. This is why some players in many teams have been missing for quite some time. 

[lingaro]

It's not fitness that's the issue. It's timing,  positioning, running routines, moves etc.  You can be the fittest on earth but if you have no idea what is going on your up against it. 

[The Phantom Horseman]

I didn't see the Toulouse game live (was planning to drive up but wasn't well enough on the day) but it's always interesting watching the game on RoversTV after reading the comments on here, I think most of them were pretty accurate. My random thoughts...

The two main differences between the teams for me were goal-line defence and error rate. I think anyone seeing just the tries will think we were soft defensively but much of our defence during the game was really good and committed, we were just found lacking near the line on four occasions.

As people have stated they were better at slowing down the ruck than we were and they were getting over the advantage line as a result, and our error rate was dreadful - though I thought there were several instances where the call went against us when it could easily have gone the other way. As I said after the Bradford game, we have had a few games earlier this season where we definitely got the rub of the green with the officials' calls, but I don't think we did against Bradford and we definitely didn't against Toulouse. Just how it goes sometimes.

Given all the above re error rate, slow rucks etc I think we deserve some credit for being really competitive for much of the game - I think there's a case for saying we were the better team for an hour, though they were well on top in the last 20 minutes or so. As plenty of people have said, the interception when we were camped on their line at 12-6 down really was the turning point, we were dominating the game then but they got a repeat set when the ball was dislodged from Gale's hands and scored.

I think a lot of neutral fans are probably never going to see the game and they'll think it was an easy Toulouse win looking at the score, but for an hour there really wasn't anything between the teams. They made decent metres at times but no real clean breaks and all their points came from repeat sets.

One thing that stood out from the game was that there were very few players who stood out in attack, barring maybe Schaumkell for them, that's usually a sign of a tight defensive contest. Four quality half backs on show but all four were largely shut down.

A disappointing result, but anyone watching the game would say we wouldn't be out of it by any means if we were to play them again this season.

 

 

 

 

 

[The Phantom Horseman]

One thing I haven't seen mentioned on here was the alleged biting incident. I think on the RoversTV footage you can hear the ref saying that Parata was the Featherstone player accused of this and he was certainly involved in a tackle with Dixon (when parata was in possession) just before the allegation was made.

I have to say that out of our squad he's about the last player I would have suggested might do something like that but the officials did seem to accept that Dixon's hand was marked.

It's an important case as the penalties if found guilty are severe (either grade E or F, and Grade E is a 4-8 match ban).

I see that Jamie Dallimore recently went to the trouble and expense of paying for a forensic bite analyst who works for the police force to examine the bite mark.

I don't know who the burden of proof lies with but I'd be fairly sure that the video footage of the incident would shed little light on it, it was under the posts at the railway end and covered by a long shot not a close-up one.

 

 

[lingaro]

If the RFL has any say he'll have his teeth pulled and and Tolouse awarded all our points and all the cash that people donate to the club. 

[The Phantom Horseman]

On 03/08/2021 at 13:40, The Phantom Horseman said:

One thing I haven't seen mentioned on here was the alleged biting incident. I think on the RoversTV footage you can hear the ref saying that Parata was the Featherstone player accused of this and he was certainly involved in a tackle with Dixon (when parata was in possession) just before the allegation was made.

I have to say that out of our squad he's about the last player I would have suggested might do something like that but the officials did seem to accept that Dixon's hand was marked.

It's an important case as the penalties if found guilty are severe (either grade E or F, and Grade E is a 4-8 match ban).

I see that Jamie Dallimore recently went to the trouble and expense of paying for a forensic bite analyst who works for the police force to examine the bite mark.

I don't know who the burden of proof lies with but I'd be fairly sure that the video footage of the incident would shed little light on it, it was under the posts at the railway end and covered by a long shot not a close-up one.

 

 

The Parata incident has been "referred for further investigation".

[The Phantom Horseman]

In case anyone else is interested in "geeky" stuff

The stats from the Toulouse game pretty much confirmed what has been stated in this thread.

Plays & yards
1st half Fev 105 for 829 yards, Toulouse 75 for 651 yards
2nd half Fev 61 for 502 yards, Toulouse 92 for 731 yards
totals Fev 166 plays for 1331 yards (8 yards per play) Toulouse 167 plays for 1382 yards (8.27 yards per play)
errors
1st half Fev 8 Toulouse 4
2nd half Fev 11 Toulouse 5
total Fev 19 Toulouse 9

Penalties awarded: Fev 6 Toulouse 3

Sometimes stats correct mistaken impressions, but on this occasion they back up what we all thought - we gave almost as good as we got in terms of yardage but made far too many errors, especially in the second half, where at one stage we made 7 errors in the space of 9 sets.

 

[elppaxr2i]

Who cares?

its been over a week now that games gone - now onto rest of season

[The Phantom Horseman]

11 hours ago, elppaxr2i said:

Who cares?

 

See the phrase "if anyone else is interested in geeky stuff".

I know some are. Easy for those who aren't just to skip it.