Bostwick wrote:
From what I have been told. The sacking of Jon Sharp and appointment of Duffman has not gone down well with everyone at the club.
The players were given time off in the break,as were ours. However this was cancelled at very short notice. Players had things arranged with their families for this time, this has created some strife.
In addition, to come fourth in the competition behind Halifax has somewhat dented their pride.
Meh. There are always going to be noses out of joint when a coach goes but anyone who saw the effort the players put in in Toulouse (including one 13-minute passage where Fev defended 9 consecutive sets inside our own 40) would have to accept that the players have responded well to the new coach so far.
Indeed, there's a piece in today's RL Express where Duffy talks about how happy he has been with the players' attitudes - "with a new coach coming in at this stage they could have bought out, but their attitude has been first class", and he also says some players that had booked holidays chose to remain with the squad.
As for pride being dented by finishing behind Fax, that's nonsense. They beat us (and played very well) in a game that was meaningless to us and meant everything to them, and generally in Fev we are very pleased we finished 4th not 3rd - it's meaningless in terms of finance for next year but it means we get Leigh, Warrington and Hull KR at home, all of whose fans will travel in numbers, whereas Fax have Catalans, Widnes and us - we will probably take more fans to the Shay than either of the SL teams. The one scenario we didn't want as a club is having Catalans, Toulouse or London as one of our home games, and luckily we've avoided all three.
