Hawks are too hot to handle

Photo: Chris Sunderland

COMING THROUGH: Neil Roden attempts to make a break.

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Oldham 4, Hunslet 60

DEMORALISED ROUGHYEDS HANDED A HARSH LESSON

OUCH. There is being brought back down to earth, then there is this.

Hunslet, who scored 11 tries in a totally one-sided romp, ground the Roughyeds into the dirt with a startling effort at the Whitebank Stadium, deposing the home team from the summit of Co-operative Championship One and landing them flat on their collective backside.

From start to finish, the Hawks had an answer to each and every question posed by Tony Benson’s men.

And after holding firm in the opening quarter up the slope, player-coach Paul March and his merry men thoroughly punished Oldham with a swift, clinical series of attacks.

From being delicately poised at 4-4 at the midpoint of the first half, the game suddenly and decisively tipped the way of the visitors.

Five unanswered tries arrived in the space of 20 minutes to leave Oldham — faced with playing uphill in searing heat during the second half — demoralised and with no realistic route back into the contest.

The Hawks backs provided the bulk of their huge points total, with Waine Pryce and Wayne McHugh both landing hat-tricks. The latter also knocked home eight goals for a personal haul of 28.

And it was no coincidence whatsoever that the Hawks surged ahead just after powerful pair Neil Lowe and Scott Woodcock had been introduced into the action from the substitutes bench.

Veteran Lowe seems to relish playing against the Roughyeds and was revelling in the sunshine, popping off passes and brushing aside tackles with regularity, while man-mountain Woodcock again proved a hard man for a tired defence to halt.

The playmaking March twins were as canny as ever, too. In fact, it was difficult to pick out a Hawks player who was under-par.

They were certainly a far better, more cohesive side than the one which has at times struggled against Oldham in their three previous meetings in 2010.

But having absorbed three losses out of four in all competitions, Benson will now be happy to see the back of a team who seem to be on an upward spiral.

Roughyeds fans would have hoped for far better than this before kick-off, particularly with new loan signing Gregg McNally handed a debut at half-back.

Prolific with Whitehaven, the 19-year-old arrived from Huddersfield charged with providing direction in a midfield still absent of Neil Roden through injury.

But it was too big a task for the youngster, who had a middling game behind a pack which found the going too tough.

The opening exchanges were fairly even and after the Hawks had taken the lead thanks to a clever back-of-hand pass from full-back Stuart Kain which found Pryce, Oldham hit back after equally good ball skills from Ian Hodson released Paul Reilly, who subsequently sent in Lucas Onyango for his 11th try of the league season.

McNally almost went in for a debut try off half-back partner Matty Ashe’s grubber kick but referee Clint Sharrad spotted a knock-on prior to the ball finding its way to his grasp.

That was about as good as it got for the Roughyeds.

Good skills from the March twins set up the first of three tries in eight minutes, with first Pryce and then Kain and McHugh benefiting from good offloads and swift movement of the ball from wing to wing.

Danny Grimshaw slipped past Reilly too easily four minutes before the break for the next try and that was followed by a good finish from winger Michael Mark, off another pass in the tackle by Lowe.

Four goals by McHugh left Oldham 32-4 down at half-time, with the unenviable task of playing up the hill still to come.

The second half followed a similar pattern as the Hawks barely relented.

Price and a show-and-go effort from David March came before the hour mark and Lowe’s offload then put Woodcock one-on-one with Paul O’Connor, leaving one firm winner in the duel.

McHugh kicked a penalty to bring up Hunslet’s half-century 10 minutes from full-time.

And two further tries by McHugh — the first on the back of a series of superb overhead passes, as Hunslet turned on the Harlem Globetrotters-like style — rounded off a rugby league lesson.


Benson heaps praise on 11-try Hunslet

TONY BENSON held his hands up to acclaim a superb performance by Hunslet, who blew poor Roughyeds out of the water at the Whitebank Stadium.

On a scorching afternoon, the red-hot Hawks were superior in every department as they came away with an 11-try battering, inflicting only a second defeat of the Co-operative Championship One season on Oldham.

“They played so well that we were beaten in every department,” said Benson.

“Their completion rates were between 90 and 100-per-cent every quarter and we just didn’t have any ball.

“They are a big side and in the heat, they got on top of us and stayed there. They just kept rolling on with the ball, which is ironically what we wanted to do.

“We weren’t great and there are lots of areas in which we could be better.

“But Hunslet played superbly and we really didn’t have the answers.

“The idea was to get some advantage going into the second half, thinking that we would have more ball than we had, resulting in us wearing them down.

“The exact opposite happened and they had more ball and coming into the second half they were pretty much on fire.

“It was a very tough day at the office.”

Benson felt his team had prepared well for the game and will now spend time analysing what went wrong in preparation of this Sunday’s trip north to Workington.

“There will be lots of underlying reasons why it happened and those you only see looking back on DVD to get the full picture,” Benson said.

“I don’t think anyone turned up to lose by that sort of score and in the build-up to the game we were very confident.

“We trained really well and I thought we had a good plan.

“With that team, if you have the ball enough you are fine. Last time we played them we didn’t have it enough as we were penalised off the park but this time it was because they just kept it.”

As for new boy Gregg McNally, who made his Roughyeds debut after signing on a month’s loan from Super League side Huddersfield, Benson felt his talents were well stifled.

“Gregg was obviously targeted, as was Matty Ashe,” he added. “We knew it would happen, but not to the extent that it did.

“They did it very well and to be fair we were trying to target the Marches too but didn’t have enough ball to wear them out or trouble them.

“I feel for the boys as we did work so hard during the week.

“Everything was very positive going into this game and it just shows how quickly it can turn.”