Oldham display true grit
Date published: 03 May 2011
TOUCH DOWN... Mark Brocklehurst reaches out to score Oldham’s sixth try in the corner.
Oldham 46, Doncaster 24
RESILIENT Roughyeds survived several dressing room setbacks last week — and were then rocked by another only minutes before kick-off at the Whitebank Stadium on Sunday.
The players were out warming up when Lucas Onyango rose to take a high ball, landed awkwardly on the hard pitch and seriously damaged an Achilles tendon.
Coach Tony Benson, already without Shaun Robinson, Matthew Fogarty and Marcus St Hilaire, and with Jack Bradbury having played in the reserves’ win at Featherstone on Friday, was left with no option but to withdraw Paul Noone from the pack and play him at centre, with Mark Brocklehurst switching from centre to wing.
Valu Bentley moved off the bench to take Noone’s second-row spot and rookie 18th man Michael Ward was thrown in at the deep end as a sub for his first taste of senior rugby.
Ward arrived at the ground as the team’s match-day dogsbody, ready to perform menial tasks around the dressing room, and left with head held high as the new kid on the block, basking in the
sunshine of a delightful debut.
John Gillam also had reason to be pleased with himself, contributing much on the left wing in a sooner-than-expected return to rugby after three months out with a broken nose and a fractured eye socket.
Fogarty had beaten his hamstring injury and was ready to return to the side only to fall ill on Friday with a gastric problem.
Benson got round that one by playing Ben Wood at left centre, the subsequent loss of Onyango meaning that Roughyeds had two forwards, Wood and Noone, in key positions in the threequarter line.
This was the unlikely line-up which played Doncaster off the park and chalked up eight tries.
Ward’s big moment came when, under pressure, he timed to perfection a defence-splitting pass that sent Carl Forber through the Dons' defensive line and under the posts.
It was one of many magical moments such as . . .
:: John Clough’s early break from dummy half which took him through to score from halfway.
:: Wood’s thundering first-half man-and-ball tackles on his opposite centre Chris Spurr.
:: Brocklehurst's second-half try in which the winger kept his balance beautifully just inside the touch line while smashing through two challenges to dive over in the corner.
:: Ben Heaton's score midway through the second half when he hit a Dons' chip-kick at full throttle to turn defence into attack and race away to score.
:: Forber’s accurate goalkicking — seven out of eight — and his ability to put colleagues into space, as he did when setting up tries for Noone and Brocklehurst.
:: The left-flank link-up of Neil Roden and Chris Clarke that provided Wood with two walk-in tries in the first few minutes.
::The superb contribution on attack and defence of the game's most damaging front-row forward, Luke Sutton.
The eighth and final Oldham try was scored by prop Jason Boults only two minutes before the Roughyeds forward blotted his copybook for the second time in as many matches by getting himself sent off — this time for retaliating to a high tackle by Kyle Kesik, who was also dismissed.
After that there was only time for Scott Spaven to score the Dons’ fifth try, three of which could best be described as “softies”.
