Still time to put it right – Robbo

CRAIG Robinson — staying upbeat

CRAIG Robinson says he was “devastated” by the loss to Dewsbury at the weekend, but remains upbeat about his side’s prospects.

After lining up against triumphant brother Adam at Boundary Park, the 23-year-old Robinson (pictured, right) well and truly took the defeat home with him.

The Rams’ 36-12 victory, based on a rock-solid defensive effort which totally shut out the Roughyeds in the opening 40 minutes, enhances the status of Warren Jowitt’s men as favourites to claim the Co-operative Championship One crown come the season’s end while damaging Oldham’s own prospects.

Still, while the game left many home supporters feeling slightly deflated, as far as Robinson is concerned it only makes him more determined to set things right in the remainder of the season.

“All we can do now is take each game as it comes and look to win each one,” said the workaholic former Rochdale forward, who lives with his Dewsbury player sibling in the family home in Wakefield.

“We are still in with a good chance of promotion and have to look after our own game while relying on results elsewhere. Any team can beat any other in this division.

“Swinton will be a tough one this coming weekend, but we talked about the need to bounce back in the changing rooms after the Dewsbury game and we are all more determined than ever to do that.

“Adam was quite happy afterwards and I have a couple of friends in that Dewsbury team who felt the same and made it known to me. That only made the feeling worse, to be honest.

“It was a big game for me being up against my brother and he has the bragging rights at home now.

“But hopefully when the teams meet at their place, I can help do the same to him.”

The bare statistics suggest that the Roughyeds have tended to stumble out of the blocks this season.

Tony Benson’s men have lost three of their 11 competitive games in total: 34-22 at home to Sheffield in the Northern Rail Cup and twice in the Co-operative Championship One, 34-26 at Keighley and against Dewsbury.

On no fewer than six occasions, though — more than half the games played so far — the Roughyeds have entered half-time facing a deficit.

None was bigger than the 22-0 scoreline against the Rams which left the Roughyeds facing a huge uphill battle that the team wasn’t able to overcome.

Ironically, though, Oldham were far from slow to get going initially and piled the pressure on Dewsbury in the early stages but with nothing to show for it, other than a Stevie Gibbons effort which the Roughyeds hooker felt should have been awarded.

Still, Robinson isn’t one to shift blame onto officialdom and wasn’t keen to dwell on that incident or the one which saw Andy Ballard apparently blocked off from chasing his own kick downfield as the try line beckoned with half-time approaching.

“It was one of those that could have gone either way,” said Robinson of the Ballard non-decision.

“I am not going to get into blaming the referee, as Dewsbury played very well whereas we didn’t put in a performance and that is what the game was decided by.

“I am devastated about it all and for some reason we just didn’t put the sort of performance together that we are capable of.

“In the opening 10 minutes we were well on top and I thought that we would really go on to cause them problems.

“But they showed a really good defence and then got that breakaway try (from Kane Epati) which came completely against the run of play.

“In itself that was a pretty devastating moment, as we had all the possession yet they had scored.

“Tony (Benson) was very disappointed in what he had seen and asked us all at half-time if we wanted to win the game. If so, he said, we needed to do something about it.

“We picked it up a bit after that but obviously not enough to get the points.”