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by ROGER HALSTEAD
 
STEVE Deakin, the Roughyeds coach, was a happy man after last night's (Thursday's) training session when he announced that he expected 20 of his 26 players to be fit and available for the Northern Rail Cup game against Swinton at Sedgley Park on Sunday.
 
Deaks himself was also feeling better after being "pretty rough" earlier in the week. He stayed away from training on Tuesday as a precaution, but he took the open-air field session last night, although he didn't go with the players to the gym afterwards for fear of spreading a bug in a confined atmosphere.
 
The six who will NOT be available this weekend are long-term injury victims Lee Sanderson, Lee Wingfield, Lucas Onyango and Daryl Cardiss, plus Matty Brooks and Simon Baldwin, both of whom must see a specialist about damaged knees.
 
Brooks could play "at a pinch" but he did well to turn out against the Army at Aldershot last Sunday in the third round of the Carnegie Challenge Cup and Deaks is reluctant to put his injury under more pressure and thus take the risk of aggravating the damage.
 
The other 16 who travelled to the Hampshire garrison town last week are expected to be okay and they are joined by Said Tamghart, back after suspension, Gareth Langley, Alex Wilkinson and Simeon Hoyle, always providing the hooker suffers no adverse reaction after playing his first game in seven weeks for the reserves at Featherstone last night.
 
Simeon was 'spelled' every so often, but in total he probably did something like 40 of the 80 minutes and, appropriately, he scored the winning try in an excellent 18-14 Oldham victory. By all accounts he was fine afterwards, but in terms of whether he will play on Sunday what matters is how he feels on Saturday morning.
 
Said Deaks: "Hopefully, I'll be picking from 20. Some of the boys still have bumps and bruises, but we will re-assess the situation on Saturday morning and, once that has been done, I'll name the 17 for the game. Suffice to say that I am very happy with the way things have gone this week."
 
The 20 players in the running (in no particular order) are Neil Roden, Hoyle, Tamghart, James Coyle, Rob Roberts, Tommy Goulden, Danny Halliwell, Tommy Grundy, Langley, Mick Nanyn, Warren Stevens, Richard Mervill, Marcus St Hilaire, Adam Robinson, Chris Baines, Paul O'Connor, Phil Joseph, Jason Boults, Craig Littler and Alex Wilkinson.