THE game at Workington today is the first of two between Town and the Roughyeds at the newly-named Fibrus Community Stadium, formerly Derwent Park.
With only nine teams in League One, providing 16 matches on a home-and-away basis, we’ve got four loop fixtures which mean 20 games in total.
To make it 20, we travel to Workington and Keighley Cougars twice and we play Newcastle and Cornwall twice at home, writes ROGER HALSTEAD.
In total we play Town three times – twice up there and once at BP in our final regular league game of the season. Don’t miss that one !
The eight teams in League One, as well as OLDHAM, are Workington Town, Rochdale Hornets, Hunslet, Cornwall, Midlands Hurricanes, North Wales Crusaders and the two who were relegated from the Championship, Keighley Cougars and Newcastle Thunder.
Changes to the structure of the game below Super League will take place gradually over the next three seasons to produce two divisions of 12 clubs by 2026.
The one League One change this year is that the winner of the two-to-six play-off. Instead of going up with the champions, will play the team finishing 12th in the Championship to determine which team takes the 13th place in the 2025 Championship.
In other words, if Oldham finish top, they go up automatically. If they finish between places 2 to 6 inclusive they will be in the play-off and they must win that to qualify for a divisional-decisive showdown with the team finishing in 12th place in the Championship.
Oldham beat Town home and away last season, and in recent years have had a decent record up there, but without three front-line forwards through injury; the fact that Town now have Jarrod Sammut in their ranks; and the knowledge that every team in the division would love to turn over the red-hot favourites, there are grounds to believe that this could be a tense affair.
Like Oldham, Town are out of the two major cup competitions. But they had a good home win against derby rivals Whitehaven in the Ike Southward Memorial match and they will be tough opponents, that’s for sure/
150 Games
Congratulations are due to Jay Chapelhow, who has completed the major milestone of 150 senior appearances – five for Oldham, 55 for Newcastle Thunder, 81 for Widnes Vikings and nine for Whitehaven.
The twins were at ‘Haven long enough to learn how much bitter rivalry there is between the two clubs that share the West Cumbrian coast and how well Town must have played in the Southward game. I’m taking Oldham to win, but not by many.
John Etty
A reminder that John Etty’s funeral in Fleetwood is on Tuesday at 10am at Emmanuel at the Mount Church, Mount Road, Fleetwood FY7 6RE, A member of the original Oldham Hall of Fame, John played for Batley, Oldham and Wakefield. He was one of only a handful of players, as was his good mate and fellow Oldham star Derek Turner, to win all six major trophies available to players at that time.
John Chadwick,a former club secretary and chairman, will speak publicly at the funeral.
