Beating the drum for Roughyeds

LET’S MAKE SOME NOISE . . . Oldham Roughyeds Lucas Onyango (centre), with fans Issouf Ouederaogo (left), Samuel Ouederaogo, David Ouederaogo and Benjamin Kisaka at the Whitebank Stadium.

BONGO drums, vuvuzelas and dancing are not the first images that come to mind when one thinks of rugby league.

But that taste of Africa is a big part of the Roughyeds experience – and it’s catching on.
Kenyan winger Lucas Onyango has a passionate following of fans at the Whitebank Stadium, and his team-mates have begged him to make sure his admirers head to the Co-operative Championship One Play-off Final at Warrington.

Roughyeds face York at the Halliwell Jones stadium on Sunday.

“The atmosphere is always good when they come along to matches,” said Lucas.

“They all live quite close to the stadium luckily.

“The other guys at the club said to me ‘you have to tell them to come to the final’.

“They love to dance and at the turn of the year they started bringing drums, which have become a regular thing now.

“Sometimes they dress up in Kenyan national costume. The most recent addition was a vuvuzela!

“After all the hype about how unpopular the vuvuzelas were in the World Cup it was hard to know what the reaction would be at Whitebank, but they went down really well.”

Onyango, who has been with the club for four years, believes his performances improve whenever the fan club turn up.

“They inspire me to play as well as I can, I love it when they come to the matches,” he said.

“I can always hear them throughout the game. They are quite loud!

“But I don’t find it off-putting at all and I don’t feel the need to try and block it out. It spurs me on.”