Boults set to join 100 club

JASON Boults in action for Oldham Roughyeds against York City Knights.

JASON Boults, the Oldham front-row forward, is closing in on his 100-game milestone for the Roughyeds.

The 26-year-old former Bradford and Halifax prop, in his fourth season with Roughyeds, is in line to play his 99th game in cup and league for Oldham at Blackpool on Sunday and to complete his century seven days later against South Wales Scorpions at Whitebank.

The Yorkshireman will become the second member of Tony Benson's promotion-seeking squad to join the Roughyeds' 100 Club this season, following full-back Paul O'Connor's achievement in the game at Gateshead on July 4.

O'Connor led the side out on Tyneside and was similarly honoured a week later in front of home fans when Swinton Lions were beaten 42-30 at Whitebank, the Roughyeds' fifth win in a row.

Boults, the unsung hero of Oldham's front-row, joined the club when Roughyeds began to rebuild in the third tier of the professional game following their disastrous relegation season of 2006 when they went through the entire league programme without winning a game.

Sadly for Boults, he grafted through a total of 58 Oldham games in his first two seasons only to miss out when the Roughyeds' teams were selected for both the 2007 and 2008 second division Grand Finals.

In 2007, when Roughyeds were beaten 24-6 by Featherstone Rovers at Headingley, Tony Tonks and Richard Mervill were the starting props with Said Tamghart providing front-row support from the bench.

A year later, when Ellery Hanley's Doncaster broke Oldham hearts with an 18-10 win at Warrington, Mervill and Adam Robinson propped, with Luke Menzies and Tamghart among the substitutes.

Despite those disappointments Boults again threw his hat into the Roughyeds ring for 2009 when he played 20 times.

He would have turned out a lot more but for a spell in the early part of that year when he was working abroad and was unavailable in March and April.

He returned to the club to play in the last 17 games of the season, and this time it was third time lucky for him on Grand Final day when he was picked at No 8, with Wayne Kerr at No 10, in the side agonisingly pipped 28-26 by Keighley Cougars, again at the Halliwell Jones Stadium in Warrington.

Boults will become the fourth prop out of only 12 players — Jason Clegg (147), Lee Doran (112) and Danny Guest (104) are the other front rowers — to have hit the century milestone since the birth of Oldham RLFC (1997) Ltd.