Rivals under spotlight

OLDHAM Rugby League Club’s coaching double-act of Scott Naylor and Lee Spencer will be at Spotland on Sunday to run the rule over the Roughyeds’ play-off opponents.
Leaving nothing to chance, the men who hope to steer Oldham to promotion in their first season at Whitebank will take in the clash of third-placed Rochdale Hornets and fourth-placed London Skolars.
The winners will go head to head with Oldham at Whitebank on Sunday week, September 15 (3pm kick-off) for the right to go through to the final at Leigh Sports Village on September 29.
As Championship One runners-up, Roughyeds finished a massive nine points ahead of both Rochdale and London, but Naylor is acutely aware that what has gone before will count for precisely zilch in the intimidating atmosphere of play-off rugby.
It’s with that in mind that the Oldham boss wants to check on the current form of both clubs.
Naylor took his squad to Leigh last night for a practice run-out behind closed doors against the Centurions' first-team squad, which was getting ready for a Championship play-off clash at Featherstone on Sunday.
“Scott was delighted with what the exercise achieved,” said Roughyeds chairman Chris Hamilton. “It was exactly what he wanted.”
Rochdale centres Danny Davies and Dave Hull are injury doubts, Davies having damaged a hamstring in last week's win against Gloucester.
In Sunday's other play-off game, Hemel Stags are at home to Tony Benson’s Oxford. The losers go out.


TERRY Clawson, the 1972 Rugby League World Cup winner and ex-Oldham prop, has died at his home in Pontefract, aged 73.
Clawson enjoyed a fine career as a ball-handling forward with Featherstone, Bradford, Leeds, Oldham, York, Wakefield and Hull in the 1960s and 1970s and was capped 14 times by Great Britain.
When he arrived at Oldham for the start of the 1973-74 season he was one of the most experienced prop forwards in the game.
In the 12 months he was an Oldham player, Clawson played in nine internationals, including all three against the Kangaroos. He was selected for the 1974 tour of Australia and New Zealand.
He returned from tour to play only three games with Oldham in 1974-75, finishing with a total of 19 Oldham appearances.
More than a decade later his son Neil, also a prop, came to Oldham and played more than 80 games between 1986 and 1990.
Clawson won a Championship final with Leeds in 1972, when he secured the Harry Sunderland Trophy as man of the match, but his finest hour came later that year when he was a member of the Great Britain team that won the Rugby League World Cup in Lyon.
A funeral service will take place at Pontefract Crematorium on Thursday, September 12 (11.20am).