Double injury blow did a lot to hurt Cup chances

Benson’s Beat by coach Tony Benson

THERE were lots of good things on show in the Featherstone game and also plenty of areas for us to improve in order to play at that next level.

Looking at the situation we are faced with now, there is a good and a bad side to it. It wouldn’t have been ideal going into our next league game, away at York, having played a Northern Rail Cup semi-final four days earlier as we would have had to.

At the same time though, we are all gutted that we didn’t win the game. We went out fully committed and I would love to be looking forward to a semi-final right now.

Looking back on it, those 10 minutes after half-time when we suffered the injuries destroyed us and let them in to score tries which proved decisive.

Apart from that we matched Featherstone, which is not a bad effort against a side of their calibre.

With Paul Reilly off with a badly broken nose we had Marcus St Hilaire, who was suffering badly with a tight hamstring, at full-back and Gary Sykes at left centre and they targeted that area.

The try from the kick into the corner was one that Junior (St Hilaire) couldn’t run to, while the one with the chip over Dave Allen would have been cleaned up by Junior as well had he been fit.

Reills’s nose was badly broken and at one stage he couldn’t breathe through it, which shows how brave he was to come back on the field.

It wasn’t deliberate by their player, but it didn’t help us at all.

In any other position we were covered well. But we had to put our quickest forward, Sykes, at centre which meant that Phil Joseph had to play the whole of the second half at hooker.

Allen was also down to be spelled, but the change of plans meant that it wasn’t possible.

We only had one interchange left in the last 10 minutes and the boys did very well, considering.

One aspect of the performance I was particularly pleased with was the kicking games of James Coyle and Neil Roden, especially given that we were continually making minimal progress against them.

For our try in the second half, we had planned the move with the short kick over the top as we had seen that their full-back stands very deep.

It was a good way to get in behind the ruck — but it is one thing to say it, and another to perform it as well as Neil Roden and then Lee Greenwood did.

We have got plenty of time now to work on non game-specific things and that is what we will be doing before we play York in another match that takes place in front of the cameras.

o Question for Tony? Email him at: tonybenson@oldham-chronicle.co.uk