Mixture of the brilliant and awful at Swinton

THE GOOD, the bad and the ugly all featured in our win against Swinton at the weekend.

Looking back at the game again on video, from our perspective the first half contained some brilliant parts as well as some really terrible ones, but the second half was a lot more like what we are looking for.

We ended up scoring 22 points in each half, funnily enough. But the difference was, in the opening period we were coming up with long-range tries, while Swinton's four tries in that half all came from sets that started in our 30 metres. Giving the ball up to them was a major contributory factor to the home side scoring those 20 points by half-time.

After the break our attack improved and we were more patient with the ball, while our defence also came on leaps and bounds.

In the first half we were defending to the width of the field and it enabled them to go man-on-man on us and get a roll on, but we tightened up after that and restricted them to just one more try when they got numbers over on our left-hand side.

The way we finished the game has created some excitement for us and we are feeling good as a team right now.

The next challenge for us in what is a quiet month game-wise is the Northern Rail Cup quarter-final against Featherstone Rovers.

Against a side as good as they are, we have got to make sure we turn up and play for the full 80 minutes.

If we were to 'do a Gateshead' and have a mad 20-minute spell then against a side from the top end of the Championship, the game will be gone.

There is no doubt about it — Featherstone are a top-quality side and we will have to play extremely well to win the game.

That is what we are preparing to do, though, and we are confident of putting on a good performance.

While we work on our defence every week in training, this week we will be looking at improving our exit sets.

What I want us to do is get through the set and to a kick, clinically and with no messing around.

At the same time, I don't want us to be stifled. We do score a lot of tries that start in our own half, but I want us to also build pressure and move the ball when the time is right.

It is just a case of getting the balance right and we feel that we are getting there.

tonybenson@oldham-chronicle.co.uk