Red-hot form fuels new hope
Date published: 25 July 2011
Oldham 36, Keighley 14
Roughyeds batter Cougars to boost play-off prospects
IF OLDHAM can maintain their blistering home form and carry it over to away games as well, few teams will fancy going head to head with Tony Benson's boys in the forthcoming Championship One play-offs.
Three weeks after demolishing Whitehaven 40-20 at Whitebank, Roughyeds clattered second-placed Keighley 36-14 at the same venue yesterday to achieve six super home wins in a row against London Skolars, Rochdale, Doncaster, South Wales Scorpions, Whitehaven and the Cougars.
Fans thought the Whitehaven performance was good; this was even better.
Cougars were in the game for half an hour, but once Oldham edged ahead for the second time with a penalty try on 32 minutes they gradually took control and totally dominated the second half.
Penalty try? Not many of those are given these days, but referee Ronnie Laughton had no hesitation in awarding Roughyeds this rarity after Mark McCully was felled by a high shot as he crossed the Cougars try line just inside the corner flag.
It gave Benson's men a 12-10 lead from which they never looked back, turning round 14-10 in front and then adding 22 unanswered points in the second half before Cougars went in for a consolation try on the stroke of full time.
To prevent Jason Demetriou and Jy-Mel Coleman controlling the game for the visitors, Oldham's pack had to stop Keighley's heavyweights advancing up the middle and they did it with a collective desire which clearly rattled the likes of big Andy Shickell, Will Cartledge, Oliver Pursglove and Ryan Benjafield.
Take a bow Jason Boults, Martin Roden, Luke Stenchion and Valu Bentley — a quartet who fought like fury in the first 20 minutes to lay down some ground rules up front and show that the Roughyeds wouldn't be intimidated.
After a job well done, they departed for a breather and Benson introduced his next wave of warriors to carry on the good work. They did exactly that — John Clough, Luke Sutton, Callum Casey and Michael Ward, chunky, scrum-capped and willing to tackle anything that moved in Keighley colours.
Throughout this time Paul Noone on the right and Danny Bravo on the left were equally combative out wide, but there was no rest for either of them, save for a short spell near the end when Bravo went off temporarily to have a head wound attended to.
Oldham's game plan, formulated with the strategy and precision of a military exercise, worked to perfection. It was to tackle in numbers, keep Demetriou's influence to a minimum and prevent halves Jy-Mel Coleman and Ryan Smith enjoying the time and space to dictate the game.
Keighley's frustration spilled over when Shickell was sin-binned for holding down early in the second half and when hooker James Feather was sent off near the end for a high tackle on Bentley.
Player-coach Demetriou had made no secret pre-match that Cougars would be targeting Oldham's chief playmaker Neil Roden and aiming to 'do a job' on the 31-year-old stand-off half who remains at the centre of his side's attacking strategy.
Unlike Oldham's plan, Keighley's failed abysmally. With his forwards in no mood to take a backward step, Roden had a blinder and also brought out the best in his half-back partner Carl Forber. While Roden had his best game for weeks, Forber produced arguably his most effective display since he joined the club on loan. He ran at the defensive line more often than in previous games, and looked all the better for it.
Not only did Roden score the first Oldham try, he played a key role in most of the other five, either with the sharpness and timing of a pass or the strength and weight of an astute crosskick or grubber.
Outside of the halves, full-back Ben Heaton impressed with two tries, wings Mark Brocklehurst and Shaun Robinson never put a foot wrong on the flanks and centres Marcus St Hilaire and Mark McCully were clearly determined to show their colleagues in the middle that hard, rugged tackling was in no way exclusive to members of the forwards' union.
McCully, especially, had a great game from the moment he judged his leap to perfection to take Neil Roden's crosskick in the eighth minute and then to transfer the ball quickly back to Roden to score by the posts.
Cougars hit the front with a Will Cartledge try, followed by another from Jermaine Wray, this one when he scooted in from dummy half on the back of five Keighley penalties in a row.
McCully's penalty try followed and then, on the stroke of half-time, Cougars were penalised for the umpteenth time for slowing down Oldham play-the-balls and Forber landed his third goal to give his side a 14-10 interval lead.
The first try in the second half was always going to be important and it was scored by Oldham — a real gem. Noone put St Hilaire into space on the right. From the tackle, Roughyeds moved the ball left and quick hands by Clough and Neil Roden allowed McCully to send in Heaton wide out.
Spirited goal-line defence then kept Cougars at bay before Forber took off the pressure with a relieving run to half way where Shickell held him down, and was promptly sent to the sin bin.
Roughyeds scored twice while he was off, Noone capitalising on Neil Roden's kick into the in-goal and then Brocklehurst going over in the corner after a Cougars attack had broken down at half way.
The game momentarly threatened to blow up when Feather went high on Bentley during a period when the home side was awarded six consecutive penalties. The pressure from that was bound to tell and it did when Heaton went in for his second try on a delicate inside pass from master craftsman Roden.
