 |
|
| GENERAL Homepage About Us History Records The Stadium How to find us Staff LATEST NEWS News THE TEAM Head Coach Player Profiles THE MATCH Fixtures/Results Match reports League table Travel info COMMERCIAL Corporate Official Sponsors Club shop ClubCash
THE FANS COMMUNITY
|
NOTHING went right for
the Roughyeds Reserves in a 56-6 defeat by a bigger, faster,
stronger and far more experienced Leigh Centurions side at Sedgley
Park on Thursday night. Ashley Wildman, who was due to play on the wing, broke down with a knee injury as late as the pre-match warm-up --- and the game was only two minutes old when centre Gareth Schofield was "dumped" by an illegal up-and-over tackle and was taken to hospital with a shoulder injury. Oldham could have done without those setbacks against one of the strongest teams in the division but, despite the score, they did enough to earn the plaudits of coach John Hough, writes ROGER HALSTEAD. Hough had been mildly critical of the performance at Rochdale last week, but this time he was full of admiration for the way his young side battled against the odds. He said: "I was pleased. I asked them to improve on what they served up at Rochdale, and they certainly did. The scoreboard doesn't always tell the full story and, as I have said before, I am not a scoreboard coach. We had to change the side around at the last minute and then alter things again when Gareth was injured so early in the match. "We then picked up other injuries with the result that we ran out of subs and we finished up with half-backs and second-row forwards on the wings. "Despite the score we competed for 90 to 95 per cent of the game, and I did think we emerged with some credit for the way we kept on battling." On the back of four penalties in a row, Oldham totally dominated possession and field position in the first 20 to 25 minutes. They forced back-to-back sets on no fewer than FOUR occasions by putting the ball into the in-goal, chasing well and forcing the Centurions to drop out from under their sticks. Leigh defended well, but something had to give and Oldham opened the scoring in the 20th minute when Ian Hodson went close before Chris Baines won the race to touch down yet another clever grubber into the large Sedgley Park in-goal area. Ethan Langhorn, who had been off target with a 12th-minute penalty attempt from long range, made no mistake with the angled conversion. The restart kick got Leigh into Oldham territory for the first time in ages, and an Oldham error at play-the-ball gave the visitors the opportunity to put pressure on the Roughyeds defence. It paid off when Leigh scrum-half Martin Keaveney sent out a long, cut-out pass to the left wing where Jamie Smith took the ball high above his head to score in the corner. Ian Mort goaled off the touchline, and it wasn't long before Leigh were in again, this time the other winger, Linford Benjamin, scored in the opposite corner after full-back Mort had come into the line outside his halves, Keaveney and Ryan Powell. Oldham didn't deserve to be 12-6 down at that stage, but things were to get worse because only three minutes later, the strong-running winger, Smith, burst through several tackles down Oldham's right side to race from out of his own half and score a third Leigh try which Mort again improved for aan 18-6 half-time lead. Not for the first time this season, the young Oldham team had more than matched more experienced and bigger opponents for half an hour only to concede a couple of tries in the last ten minutes before half time. They had given their all, and they continued to do their best in the second half, but they couldn't contain Leigh's stronger forwards and pacier backs any longer, with the result that Leigh piled on the pressure relentlessly to score seven second-half tries -- several of them from long range. In the Oldham side Ethan Langhorn and Patrick Toft, at half-back, strove hard to hold the midfield together despite massive odds, while Phil Jaggeer worked himself to a standstill in the second-row and props Alex Eyres and Chris Clarke caught the eye while battling against a strong Leigh pack, Clarke doing particularly well in his first spell. |
