Attitudes superb for Skolars encounter

WE WERE focused on our goals against London Skolars and achieved them fully for the first time this season.

Scoring points against them was always going to happen, but the defensive effort was the main thing for us.

If you look at the two tries we conceded, one was an interception and the other came on the back of a kick which had a questionable bounce.

You can only play what is in front of you in games like that and we were very professional in everything that we did.

The result broke records and it says a lot about the team we have got here and where we are at.

If it were easy to get scores of a similar magnitude, it would have happened well before now.

What it shows is that we are a good side, while defensively we put in a good effort too.

The day as a whole wasn't without difficulty.

We set off down there at 7am on Saturday morning and arrived at the ground at 1.30pm. To spend almost six hours on a coach and to then step off and play as we did takes a lot of doing.

I also have to pass comment on our support down there — it was superb.

Looking across from the other side of the field, one half of the stand was just a sea of red and white, while the other half of the stand was taken up by Lucas’s family!

I take my hat off to the people who travelled down to support us, it was a great effort and everyone appreciates it.

It was also terrific for Andy Ballard to get the new record of 34 points in a game.

The thing that really gets me about him is the cones that he uses.

Most guys would go all-out in the off-season shopping around for the perfect kicking tee, whereas he just has two marker cones.

Even then, at one stage he was using two of differing sizes as his others had disappeared on the sidelines. It is pretty amazing.

On Monday I went to see Dewsbury play at Swinton, where they won 35-22 but weren’t the side they were against us.

Their intensity was down and Swinton could and should have won the game despite not really playing much better than they did at Boundary Park.

It would have helped us if Dewsbury had lost that game but all we can do now is concentrate on getting our own results right.

tony-benson@oldham-chronicle.co.uk