As we pass the 16^th Anniversary of our first game at the KCom, it’s almost been nice to have had a week off playing hasn’t it?

In that passage of time so much has changed and yet so much has stayed the same in the tumble drier that is being an FC fan and so the drama continues, as does the unexpected and as ever, it’s not always good either is it?

Already this season loads of stuff has gone on and been crammed in around those two defeats and all in the first fortnight of the FC 2019 campaign. Sadly, any dreams of a good start are in tatters and so this week its almost been a relief to catch our breath a bit and regroup our thoughts before we hit the road to Wigan next Sunday.   

It’s been one of those weeks that offers a time for reflection and looking forward and indeed for ensuring that as a club we do everything we can to avoid the escalating misfortune of another defeat this weekend. That would be an all-time record breaker, but we won’t dwell on that as with recovering players, a major suspension and our first Reserve game it’s been an interesting week off for us lot, as it has been for Scott Taylor who has another three off and poor old Matty Dawson-Jones who is done for the year!!! It’s therefore I feel, been one of the most incident packed and toughest starts to a season I can ever remember!

Oh Dear!!!!!!

In the end I guess the best team won but, as it happens and looking back, only just!

Yet we are fast becoming the nearly team and that’s not good enough at all. We toiled and worked and tried and tried, but in simplistic terms we just can’t finish the opposition off and it’s now a question of how long can our lads come up short and yet still turn up so enthusiastically. In sport confidence is everything and ours has to be under stress. After 13 straight defeats, it plays on my mind, so it must do the same to the players. Only this weekend Jake Connor commented on the fact that he now faces two weeks of ‘being in a bad place’ after yet another reversal.

I’m not one for predictions so early in the piece, but I do think it’s going to be a tough old campaign for our team. But, if we are honest, few of us really expected anything less did we?  

Attacking wise we have certainly improved, Connor, if we can keep him away from the disciplinary panel, is shaping up to be a ‘world beater’ and Westerman, if we can keep him away from the treatment table, is a big plus in the line as well. However, on the other side of things our pack, that once struck terror into even the biggest sets of forwards, seems to have lost a lot of it’s potency, they are getting older, looking too lightweight and failing to get the jump on their opposite numbers. Too many opposing players are in fact just allowed to stand in the tackle instead of being put on their backs and its stinging us big time. On Thursday the opposition ‘6’ ran through and even over us, because we just couldn’t slow the play the ball down to hold them when they rolled forward. Its tough for any FC fan to see our forwards bettered so easily by another team.

We were certainly marched down field a full 80 yards on several occasions, just as we were at the death at Caravan Park. So, it’s frustrating, as the attack improves and the forwards go backwards. Unfortunately, and critically, having seen 6 Super League games now, I’m starting to think that every other team seems to have got better, rather than, like us, marked time. On that evidence I base my assumption that we are going to toil a bit in what is shaping up to be a long hard season. First up however somehow, somewhere, we have to get a win and although that’s easy to say, where it will come from is much more difficult to predict. 

Heart-breaking in the end? Yes, but passionate, valiant and packed with heaps of endeavour too; for we certainly had a go!!

You can’t always win, but all the qualities we as fans ask for where there is abundance on Friday. It was a loss at the toughest of places to be defeated, but the hope of better things to come still burns on for another week at least.

Rovers were playing at somewhere around their first choice roster, but we have much more to come. Despite a Derby loss to start the season off, with the heartbreak that brings, the depleted ranks that took to the field, played with pride in the fans and the badge and should be proud of themselves. We could ask no more as spectators, for it was a fine effort against all the odds and it almost came off! With only 8 tackles missed in the whole game it was a tenacious performance and when you take away the heartbreak of that finish, if we’re honest, it probably still ended up a lot better than any of us thought it would!

But at least it’s out of the way and we escaped with our pride and credibility intact! You know, this week Jurgen Klopp said, “I can never ever enjoy being involved so closely with the Premiership title race”, probably I would guess, because he is so anxious, stressed and involved in it all and indeed in the weight of expectation it brings. And you know what? I get that completely, because I’m afraid these days, I can’t ever truly ‘enjoy’ a Derby game either and I doubt I ever will again!

Perhaps once in the dim and distant past I used to be able to go along, enjoy the spectacle, revel in the occasion and appreciate it for what it was; just another game. However, just like Mr Klopp, for me that’s all changed. I can survive it, just about, and enjoy the result if we manage to win and if we lose, I’m disappointed, but strangely relieved that its all over as well! In fact, all my analogies of watching from behind the sofa or through my fingers, really are, for me, completely authentic and truth be known, most of the time I’d just rather not watch at all!!

That said, I did watch and I have to say I was heartbroken at the end. However, that’s a feeling that only lasts as long as the circumstances that surround it, allow it to. Once I’d stepped back a bit, I realised we actually almost prevailed against all the odds, the heart and spirit was quite amazing and with a bit better discipline and a couple of creative players back to help the over-worked Sneyd, we would have won.

So for this fan its onwards to Thursday!!!

Continue reading →