No excuses

OLDHAM Roughyeds coach Tony Benson slammed the shambolic organisation that marred his side’s preparations in the losing cause against London Skolars — though he stopped well short of blaming it on an agonising 36-34 defeat.

Forced to exchange training tops for match shirts in the dug-out after being made to prepare away from the Twickenham Stoop arena, the visitors endured an awful start against a Skolars side clearly full of beans following three successive home victories.

And despite a rousing second-half comeback, the loss means that Oldham end a promising run of three wins in a row themselves.

“I thought we were being messed around to be honest,” said Benson, who was clearly livid on the eve of the game, arguing his club’s case to the RFL match commissioner ahead of a clash played after Harlequins had taken on Wigan.

“It was poorly organised. We had no idea where we were supposed to be going, what we were doing and where we were warming up.

“Even after the game, we had no idea where we were supposed to be.

“We talked about it before the game and tried to get it out of everybody’s mind. The players accepted the situation and that once the whistle blew, there is the game and it shouldn’t have an effect.

“There are no excuses. We didn’t play the game we should have done from the start and if we had, we would have won.”

The Skolars’ good home run now extends to four successive wins even despite a second-half Roughyeds comeback which saw a 30-12 lead for the home team evaporate when Carl Forber touched down 15 minutes from full-time, handing Benson’s resurgent men a 34-30 advantage.

But hopes of a top-four finish in Co-operative Championship One suffered a big blow as Gareth Honor dived home from dummy-half with six minutes remaining.

“When we get to the game that we practise, we are hard to stay with,” added a frustrated Benson. “We showed that in the periods in which we were scoring points pretty much at will.

“The first thing you have to do is hand credit to the Skolars. They are a top-five team, there is no question of that. They have proved it, week-in, week-out.

“We were not playing a bunch of mugs. They put a good game together and were a big strong side, too.

“They put us under a lot of pressure, particularly in the first half when we weren’t making any inroads — though we were going too wide, not playing the game we should have.

“Though we put the odd good kick in, generally they weren’t doing anything for us.

“In the second half, we were a lot better once we started to play our game.

“Things changed. We had a big deficit to make up, we got to that point and then it was a bit of a dumb move to knock the ball down on the fifth tackle on our line.

“That was the difference in the game — it came down to that knock-down. You can’t blame one person for losing, but it was an error we didn’t need at the time.

“The game was there for the taking and the next set, we would have come away.”