Plan came together – Benson

ROUGHYEDS team boss Tony Benson said this third win of the season against derby rivals Hornets was down to the composure of his players and to collective team discipline in adopting the game plan — and sticking to it.

"We did what we always intended to do," he said, "and, really, I can't say a lot more than that.

"We identified how Hornets would play — they tried to put pressure on our halves, for instance — and we prepared a game plan accordingly.

"We were reasonably happy to go in at half-time with a two-point lead, but we had been pulled a few times for forward passes so we talked about the need to get more depth but, otherwise, to go for more of the same.

"We scored some excellent tries and our defence was good. It's no mean feat to restrict a team like Hornets to three tries on their own pitch and the fact that two of them were the direct result of kicks, which are often 50-50 affairs anyway, supports that view.

"But for forward passes we could have had a few more tries, although so could Rochdale, to be fair."

Hornets boss John Stankevitch, never one to mince his words, slammed his team's performance, said his players had let him down and claimed: "I have a few who go missing against the bigger teams. It's all very well to see back-slaps and high-fives when we're playing Gateshead, but what about when we're up against teams like Oldham.

"I'm disgusted and gobsmacked by our lack of respect for possession. To go in at half-time only 12-10 down was a false dawn. We were never that good. We let Neil Roden rule the roost, and it's not good enough.

"We were out-thought, out-enthused and out-played by a team that was three places beneath us in the league, and that's a frightening prospect with the play-offs not far away."




OLDHAM’S reserves outgunned Dewsbury 66-20 at Whitebank to clinch second spot in the under-23s table.