Guts aplenty but we went to Dewsbury for the win

THERE were positives and negatives alike in our defeat at Dewsbury, writes Roughyeds coach Tony Benson..

Looking at it dispassionately, it wasn’t a good effort really. There were a lot of things that happened which, with the players who played that have been here all along, shouldn’t have been allowed to happen.

The effort levels and pride were certainly there in spades — I knew the players wouldn’t let their heads drop, despite all the recent events — but in the end we were outgunned by a strong Dewsbury team.

There is a lot to work on but it is important to remember that what we have here is the makings of a good team.

We went there believing that we could win. I thought that our chance would be to catch them early on, but it didn’t happen. The cohesion wasn’t there from us and that is understandable seeing as we threw a team together the day before. It is something we will now have to work on.

A couple of centres would make all the difference for us. It is such a vital but specialised position and though Chris Baines and Tommy Goulden have done well filling in there, getting them both back to their regular positions in the second row is a must.

I have to pay tribute again to guys like Luke Sutton, Ben Heaton and Martin Roden who stepped into the breach late in the week for us.

Martin and Luke haven’t played at all for some time and came up with pretty good efforts, and it was a similar case with Andy Boothroyd. Ben went really well after coming off the bench.

We certainly appreciate the fans who supported us at Dewsbury and it was nice for all of us to be around that positivity.

The situation with Mark Cass leaving the club is a very sad one and with Martin Roden playing rather than helping out on the sidelines as usual, it left us two members of coaching staff down. Thankfully, everyone jumped in to help on game day.

We came together in a meeting last night where we concentrated on assessing our goals from here on in.

There are only five fixtures left for us and none of those is easy.

Even the London Skolars game presents a danger as they appear to have improved and pushed Blackpool on their own ground at the weekend before two late tries made it 46-22 to the Panthers.

I am still confident we can win promotion.

It will be more of a fight now — but we have shown in the last couple of weeks that there is plenty of that in us.

tonybenson@oldham-chronicle.co.uk