Roughyeds’ quick-march to victory

Photo: PICTURES by DAVE MURGATROYD

It takes two . . . Lewis Palfrey surges clear for Oldham’s second try.

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OLDHAM 46 - ALL GOLDS 6

BY the left, this was some performance from the men in red and white hoops.

Dale Bloomfield, on the left wing, scored a second-half hat-trick to take his try total for the season to 17, all of them in league games.

Josh Crowley, left-side second-rower, gave a superb man-of-the-match

performance, brimming with strength, power and an uncanny ability to spin out of tackles and capped off with an exquisite, reverse pass to send in Bloomfield for his third try.

On the same side of the field, centre Jon Ford had one of his quieter days, but that was merely because Crowley and Bloomfield were the main beneficiaries of the plentiful supply of good ball that came their way from either the hands or boot of Steve Roper.

It is Roper’s job, on the left, to provide a link between pack and backs and his calm, calculated and assured performance with ball in hand was key to most of the exciting rugby that was produced on that lethal left flank.

The lefties were quick-marching throughout the whole of the second half as Oldham rattled up 32 points without replay going down the hill with the breeze behind them.

Quite simply, the men from the West Country, whom Steve McCormack had moulded into a fighting force fit to smash York and Hunslet, were blown away after half-time by Oldham’s quality rugby and their willingness to put the ball through hands.

Six of their nine tries were scored down the slope and the pick of the bunch was a real beauty, sourced by full-back Steve Nield.

Leaping high under pressure to take Matt Bradley’s towering kick, he counter-attacked up the right where he was taken by the cover defence.

From his play-the-ball, the rampaging Roughyeds moved the ball quickly left, via Roper to Crowley, who went wide and, with a reverse pass which any self-respecting centre would have been proud of, sent Bloomfield away to the line on an inside arc.

That try alone was worth the admission money at a time when Oldham are playing a brand of rugby deserving of much bigger crowds than the 500 or so they are averaging this season at Whitebank, where they are still unbeaten.

No other side in the division can match that or the fact that Scott Naylor’s men have lost only twice in the league all season — at Hunslet and at Hemel.

Bloomfield and Mo Agoro have clocked up 32 tries between them and in terms of touch downs they are way ahead of any other wingers in Championship One.

As it happened, this wasn’t one of Agoro’s better performances. While everything ‘Bloomers’ touched turned to gold — and he had to work hard to squeeze in at the corner for his first two tries — his partner-in-tries on the other wing found it difficult to cope with high kicks from Bradley or Ben White.

Twice he lost the flight of the ball as it moved around in the swirling wind and on the second occasion it led directly to the All Golds’ only try, scored by White after Scott Claridge had capitalised on Agoro’s error by taking possession of the loose ball and putting it to good use.

The only other time the visitors threatened came when hooker Craig Cook got over the line from dummy half, only to be held up by the Roughyeds’ hard-working defence.

Their luck was out early in the game when they lost second-row man Richard Jones with a leg injury and prop James Walter with concussion.

That didn’t help their cause when they needed all hands to the pump in trying to match an Oldham pack which hunted like one and ripped their forwards apart.

Behind the go-forward men, like Phil Joy, Michael Ward, Jason Boults, Ben Wood and Nathan Mason, hookers Sam Gee and Kenny Hughes had a great time.

Until he was injured late in the game, Hughes played brilliantly from dummy half and came close to pipping Crowley for man of the match.

The Roper-Bloomfield link set up the opening try for Joy and other first-half tries were scored by Lewis Palfrey, with a show and go, and by Agoro, who got in at the corner on Danny Langtree’s cut-out pass to extend his astonishing scoring sequence to 10 games.

In addition to Bloomfield’s three in the second half, Ward stormed over on Roper’s inside pass; Wood crossed after collecting a Palfrey kick; and Palfrey then completed a good captain’s knock by racing in for his second try after a defence-splitting break by Gee.

One of the division’s top scorers, Palfrey finished with a personal haul of 18 points from two tries and five goals.