Roughyeds seek home comfort

Mick Nanyn: A potentially vital score in the midweek defeat at Doncaster.,

HOME is where the heart is . . . and Oldham will need plenty of courage in order to keep alive their automatic promotion hopes against Barrow on Sunday (3pm kick off).

Steve Deakin’s side were defeated for the third time in a row on the road at Doncaster in midweek. That away-day record would be even worse, had Mick Nanyn not saved the team’s bacon with a match-winning try at Workington Town a month ago.

The 26-year-old centre’s second-half score at the Keepmoat, a typical bulldozing effort, wasn’t enough to guide the Roughyeds to a much-needed win despite a spirited effort. But it did help provide a bonus point — the value of which shouldn’t be underestimated.

Psychology plays a big part in sport when severe pressure is applied.

Just as the Roughyeds have been mentally feeling the pinch in recent weeks when things have gone against them during matches in unfamiliar surrounds, so Dave Clark’s men have stumbled in similar fashion.

Barrow have also lost three in a row away from home, all against sides — Hunslet, Blackpool, Rochdale — in the bottom half of the National League Two table.

Should the Roughyeds rediscover their mojo at Boundary Park and end up winning by more than 12 points this weekend, they will effectively strike a hefty blow against their South Cumbrian opponents by edging a point ahead of them in the race for that second automatic promotion spot.

The visitors will still have a game in hand, but ‘points in the bag’ are so valuable at this stage, particularly when tough matches at home to Keighley and away at Doncaster still lie in wait for the Raiders.

The fat lady hasn’t even approached the stage door yet.

Improvements, particularly in regard to cutting out errors in possession and silly penalties, are certainly needed if the Roughyeds are to be promoted, by any means, in 2008.

But the team has one major factor in its favour, it is that the players appear to relish taking to the field at Boundary Park.

Not since the televised match against full-timers Celtic Crusaders late last season have Oldham been beaten on their regular stomping ground.

The run of 17 successive home wins — two of which, admittedly, have come at temporary base Sedgley Park — is a record in the post-1997 era of the new Oldham club.

You have to go back to the 1989-90 season, when the team that gained promotion from the second division went agonisingly close to reaching the Challenge Cup final at Wembley won 22 in a row at Watersheddings, to better that run.

Former Roughyeds man Adam Hughes, who was such a revelation for the club in last year’s run to the NL2 Grand Final, has been ruled out of the rest of the season for Barrow and undergoes surgery to repair cruciate knee ligament damage today.

Adam Bowman, the 20-year-old who was on loan at Swinton last year, has signed on a month’s loan from Widnes to cover for Hughes and is likely to start.




Roughyeds’ reserves are in action tomorrow in what is their last fixture of the season, also against Barrow, up at Craven Park (2.30pm kick off).