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by ROGER HALSTEAD
 
The newly-formed Roughyeds reserve team produced a great performance at Post Office Road last night to beat Featherstone Rovers 18-14 in a pre-season warm-up game which was only their second run-out in Oldham colours.
 
In their first game at Keighley last week they surpassed many people's expectations by holding a very experienced Cougars side to 32-12. A handful of first-team players turned out for the home side including new signing Dan Potter, one of the most seasoned centres in the National Leagues, and evergreen player-coach Barry Eaton.
 
Last night the Roughyeds improved still further and, by all accounts, fully deserved their win after scoring 14 unanswered points in the second half. They trailed 4-14 at half-time, but then scored three second-half tries to none with Adam Jeffrey, Phil Jagger and Simeon Hoyle all touching down, and Mark Smith adding a conversion to his brace of first-half penalties.
 
Ashley Wildman was concussed, taken to hospital and kept in overnight for observation as a precautionary measure.
 
Hoyle grabbed the winning try from dummy half near the end after seemingly coming through his first game in seven weeks with flying colours.
 
According to some observers, others to catch the eye were centre Liam Kennedy and prop Alex Eyres, but the whole emphasis was on teamwork right across the park and that was exactly what coach John Hough and his No 2 Leo Casey demanded --- and got.
 
Said John: "We are really pleased. We kicked on from last week. We still had our enthusiasm and commitment, but this week we played a little bit smarter. We worked on earning back-to-back sets and we got enough to make them count in the second half.
 
"We used 23 players in total, and they all did well. We have some good lads and there were a lot of good things to come out of our performance. It was highly encouraging for all concerned, but it's early days and we have loads of work to do."
 
The Roughyeds reserves open their league season at Salford on Easter Monday in a curtain-raiser to the City Reds NL1 game.