Naylor: Dumb rugby cost us

Date published: 17 September 2013


SCOTT Naylor will experience mixed emotions when his Oldham RL players sit down at training tonight to analyse Rochdale’s 23-22 play-off win at Whitebank.

The Roughyeds boss will be bitterly disappointed, angry and frustrated - though still appreciative of the way his squad battled back from 22-12 down to level at 22-22 - playing up the hill and into the wind.

But he cites the team’s “dumb rugby” as the reason for Rochdale’s narrow win: “We have lessons to learn — and we have to learn them fast,” he said ahead of Sunday’s must-win play-off elimination clash with London Skolars at Whitebank (3pm kick off).

“Tonight’s session will be about looking at what we did wrong and hopefully taking steps to make sure we don't make the same mistakes against Skolars.

“I can never knock this fine young squad for effort and desire. They are a great bunch, gutsy, hard-working and exceptionally fit.

“Those qualities took us to second place in the league and provided us with a nine-game unbeaten run before Sunday.

“Consider this: if those boys weren’t as fit and as mentally tough as they are, they would have lost to Rochdale by 20 or 30 points because of all the dumb rugby we came up with and the number of points we presented to Rochdale on a plate.”

Naylor went on: “For the first 17 minutes we were well on top, then we started making mistakes.

“I was annoyed because I was sending on messages which largely went ignored.

“We know exactly what we have to do now to win promotion — we’ve to beat London and Rochdale in the space of eight days — and if we are to make it happen we’ll have to play a lot better than we did on Sunday.”

Sunday’s game kicks off at 3pm. All pay (no season tickets) and normal admission prices apply.