Benson: Some players didn’t turn up

RUGBY LEAGUE
TONY Benson admitted some of his players didn’t turn up at Doncaster in the right frame of mind as Oldham slipped to a seventh Co-operative Championship One defeat of the season.

Five-try Doncaster bossed the contest all the way through and kept the Roughyeds at bay for the full 80 minutes.

Oldham’s coach, who lost the services of Ben Heaton to a rib injury and Neil Roden to concussion in the second half — Danny Whitmore was also concussed, but had to come back onto the field — felt that some of his men were having to take on the jobs of their colleagues in what was a disappointing and at-times ragged display.

“It is a very difficult thing to put my finger on,” said Benson, whose team had played so well to narrowly lose 18-16 at Swinton in the previous round of games.

“We have had a great couple of weeks of training and everything has been done well.

“The warm-up was good and everyone was in the right frame of mind on the trip over.

“Then we got on the field. To be fair I give a lot of credit to Doncaster. They played really well without doing anything flash and kept on putting us under pressure, which told.

“Reasonably good breaks ended up as tries and I wouldn’t say we gave up, but it got tough towards the end.

“There were probably a couple of players who didn’t turn up. It is definitely an attitude thing.

“There were another couple who switched on and off throughout the game and a fair group working their guts out for the whole game. And they are the ones who by the end are struggling, when tries start happening.

“There was a lot of good stuff, but we need to all do it for 80 minutes against teams like that.

“You just can’t let up. Or else certain players who have given their all get tired from doing the work of others.”

Benson also admitted that Oldham are currently struggling to function as an attacking entity, failing to rack up any points at all at the Keepmoat Stadium.

“Our attack leaves a lot to be desired at the moment,” he added.

“When you are changing your team in every training session and every game, it is difficult to get some cohesion there.

“We are struggling in that area. There were a couple of times at the start where we didn’t get tries because we took wrong options and when we make mistakes, it is at crucial times and in crucial places. It is killing us.

“When we get penalised it is in our own 20 — and it is a big mistake. We have to be squeaky clean there so we can get out.

“Or we do a good defensive set, put a good kick in and a really good chase and someone has a brain explosion to give a penalty away which lets them back out.

“It gets harder and harder to keep bouncing back and trying to find new things to do.”