Naylor's salute to character

ONE of many things Scott Naylor has been beavering away at since he became Oldham’s coach is the creation of a winning mentality within his squad.

He has clearly had some success in that regard, given that his new-look Roughyeds have posted three Northern Rail Cup wins in a row and, including pre-season outings, have achieved five wins out of six all told.

It was that mental toughness, or “character” as he calls it, which was the biggest single factor in a hard-fought 24-12 win at Neath against a well-drilled South Wales side that was sufficiently aggressive in the tackle and the rucks to give the Roughyeds forwards plenty to think about.

Naylor said: “It’s good to know that we can travel more than 200 miles, get off the coach and have enough to beat tough opponents without being anywhere near our best.

“That’s what I mean about character. We showed a lot of it again and in the end it carried us through against opponents who had a real go at us.

“Our recent results have come off the back of sheer hard work, but Scorpions did a bit more work than us in the first half and we had to shape a lot better in the second half to get the result we wanted.

“It’s always nice to win so we’ll take it, and move on.

“It was an ugly win, if there is such a thing, and it owed a lot to individual class and to the bounce of the ball in addition to the right mental attitude.

“So far as other aspects of our performance were concerned we were, at best, no more than average.

“It was a long way to travel, and that’s something we are going to have to get used to. Judging by how we played in the first 20 to 30 minutes we were still on the bus. That’s not an excuse, but a possible reason for our first-half showing.

“We couldn’t control the speed of the ruck and as a consequence of that we couldn’t control the game.

“We had no momentum in the first half and it’s hard to get it back once you’ve conceded it to a side, like Scorpions, who worked extremely hard and did the basics well.

“We were a lot better in the second half and in the end we were worthy winners after scoring 12 points in three minutes late in the game.

“I’ll be looking for a big improvement, however, in our opening league game against Rochdale at Whitebank on Friday.”