Onyango won’t be rushed

OLDHAM RL won't rush Lucas Onyango into senior action after his year-long battle to beat a ruptured Achilles tendon.

Coach Tony Benson regards a fully-fit Onyango as a threat to any Championship One defence and he won't be taking chances in demanding too much, too soon of his 30-year-old Kenyan winger.

He had planned to give him a run-out by now, but weather-affected pitches and the scrapping of two warm-up games have forced Benson to keep his flamboyant flanker wrapped in cotton wool.

"He needs to be eased back gently," said the Roughyeds's boss. "And in an ideal world we would be looking at giving him no more than 20-minute spells to begin with.

"Once he has shown he can cope with that we can step it up to 40 minutes and so on, but that type of comeback clearly rules him out of first-team action and restricts him to the reserve team until we feel he is ready to go a full match.

“We can’t afford the luxury of a winger on the first-team bench, and it’s important that we take things easy with Lucas so that hopefully we can get the best out of him in a few weeks’ time when vital league points will be at stake.”

Roughyeds had hoped to arrange a reserve-team friendly this week, but Benson said that was now looking unlikely.

He has three outside backs currently in need of a comeback run-out — Onyango, Mark Brocklehurst and Sean Robinson.

Brocklehust is ready to resume after being out for several weeks with a broken thumb, while winger Robinson damaged a hip in the friendly at Whitehaven in mid-January.