CHRIS HEINITZ has been a Featherstone Rovers supporter for many years. In this article he gives his reaction to the recent news that Rovers will not compete in the Championship this season.
HERE’S the weather forecast for Featherstone in West Yorkshire.
There is a big black cloud hanging over the town and it is not expected to clear for at least 12 months.
Featherstone is an unusual place in several respects. Of all the towns in which professional Rugby League has been played, it has the smallest population and until 1985 virtually its entire economy was dependent on the mining industry. The closure of Ackton Hall Colliery decimated the town because even those who didn’t work at the pit were mostly in jobs which were dependent upon it.
Ask anyone from outside our little town what the name Featherstone means to them and either they won’t have heard of it at all or it means the home of the famous Featherstone Rovers. We are proudly passionate about our club, and it is the unifying factor for the locality.
In 2023 there were 4,809 spectators for Fev’s home match against Bradford Bulls and in the same year when we met at Odsal the attendance was 4,567. Not much difference there. But now consider this, the population of Bradford is more than 23 times the population of Featherstone.
That is not a reflection on the people of Bradford, but it helps to understand how the bond between our town and our club is probably unique. And that in turn is why the decision not to allow Fev to take part in the Championship in 2026 is absolutely devastating.
A few days ago, Amanda Courtman, who works for the Featherstone Rovers Foundation, wrote on Facebook – “I still can’t believe it’s happened. It’s not just the rugby, although that is a massive thing, it’s the social side too, our Rovers community. It is so much more than a game, it is our Fev Family. I cannot tell you how upset I am.”
On the more humorous side, the Fev Fans Forum has been debating recipes for Corned Beef Hash. People saying that they are going to make it on the opening day of the season. That might sound absurd, but we were due to play away at Batley and so many of us enjoy their corned beef hash in that lovely seating area behind the main stand.
Since Rugby League moved into the summer era so much has changed. I much prefer watching games on firm pitches in warm weather, but the move to an élite league of full-time professional players has brought about really bad consequences for those outside that élite group. In recent years the central funding to non-Super League clubs has been dramatically reduced as the proportion of TV money that the RFL receives has increased to the few and left the rest in dire straits.
I feel that now is not the time to apportion blame for Fev’s financial collapse but it’s undoubtedly true that major contributing factors have been the way Super League has come to be portrayed as the be-all and end-all combined with desperate attempts to get into it, which has been made harder and harder.
A few years ago I wrote a piece in which I cautioned against Fev over-reaching themselves in an attempt to get promotion. The majority of fans wanted that, but I was fearful of the financial consequences of overspending to get there and felt that a season in Super League could be fraught because Featherstone is not the sort of place where you will find multi-millionaires to bankroll the club.
It is understandable that so many of our fans wanted us to get into Super League. They hankered after the prospect of once more playing clubs like Wigan, Leeds and St. Helens and the amazing atmosphere when such clubs came to Post Office Road, despite the fact that Championship rugby is often far better to watch than the games you get in Super League.
Featherstone Rovers is a club with a very rich history and, as such, I am appalled that the RFL has not seen it fit to help them through this crisis when they have done so many times in the past with such clubs as Salford and Bradford.
We are talking about a club that has made seven Wembley appearances, five in the Challenge Cup final and two in the 1895 Cup Final, one of which was only last year. In 1967, they were the last club to be presented with the trophy by the reigning monarch after beating Barrow 17-12. In 1973 they won again with a thumping 33-14 win over Bradford Northern, a match in which Ken Kellett kicked eight goals in eight attempts, which remains the record for the highest number of goals kicked in a Wembley final.
During the television commentary Eddie Waring said, “That’s Mick Smith, he’s the foreigner in the team, he comes from Doncaster”. It was a reference to the fact that 14 of the 15 that were in the team were born within four miles of Post Office Road. Doncaster is 16 miles away! The most amazing result came in the 1983 final when Rovers, who finished that season in twelfth place, avoiding relegation by one point, played Hull who were the league champions. The pundits gave Fev no chance, but they pulled off an amazing 14-12 win.
It wasn’t the only time Fev knocked out the league champions on their way to winning the Challenge Cup. They did it on all three occasions, Leeds in 1967 and Warrington in 1973, and none of those were played at Post Office Road!
Way back, in 1906, Featherstone Rovers were an amateur team and the only one ever to make it into the quarter finals of the Challenge Cup. On their way there they beat the professionals from Widnes by the extraordinary scoreline of 23-2.
The most famous year in Fev’s history came in the 1976/77 season when they won the league title and did so by a clear margin of five points. They beat every other team in the league and did the double over eight of them. Has there ever been a front row like the one that Fev boasted that year. Jimmy Thompson, Keith Bridges and Vince Farrar, again all local lads and they were all capped by Yorkshire, England and Great Britain.
In both 1959 and 1963 Fev had famous victories over the Australian touring teams and more recently they won the Championship League Leaders trophy 4 years in a row from 2010 to 2013 but never got promoted because of the franchise system.
Nothing reflects more the outstanding spirit of Featherstone and their supporters than what happened from 2011-2015. The Post Office Road ground was short (very small gaps between the so called 30 and 40m metre lines) and also needed improvements to spectator facilities. Several other teams were struggling to get the finances to improve their grounds.
It became known that the now defunct McCain Stadium in Scarborough was to be demolished. A group of Fev fans and former players under the leadership of Paul Coventry formed the ‘Stand Gang’. They reached agreement with Scarborough Council that they could have some of the stands if they cleared the site.
So began the incredible achievement of taking apart the stands at Scarborough, transporting them back to Featherstone, refurbishing all the structures and re- erecting them at Post Office Road. The job was done brilliantly and they ended up looking like brand-new stands. They were erected further back than the old railway terrace, thus allowing the pitch to be converted to full size. It was an amazing achievement that will almost certainly never be repeated by the fans and ex-players of any other club.
I will be spending 2026 getting my live Rugby League fix elsewhere. I would have loved that to have been at Featherstone Lions, but age and ill-health make standing for a match impossible nowadays. So, I have sought temporary ‘asylum’ elsewhere and have chosen a club that currently has a squad of 26 players, including 15 who have previously played for Fev!
My dream is to be back at Post Office Road in 2027. It is what this great club, its fantastic supporters and our little town deserve.
Nowhere else is there a club with which the entire local community identify.