Old stagers to fore in Oldham romp

Photo: PICTURE: CHRIS SUNDERLAND.

Miles Greenwood scores his first — and the team’s fifth — try in the 40-14 victory.

Oldham 40, Gateshead 14
PAUL Ballard was an unlikely hero as Oldham put seven tries past Gateshead Thunder to become early-season pacesetters in Championship One.

No other club in that division has a youth policy to match the one at Whitebank, yet when the chips were down Tony Benson turned to his senior citizens and they responded as he knew they would.

For a variety of reasons the Roughyeds boss had to reshape the three-quarter line that had done a sterling job at Workington and he did it, in the main, by partnering Mark McCully and Ballard to mix it out wide on the left flank alongside second-rower Paul Smith, at 34 the oldest player on the books.

It was a day for the seniors to perhaps remind the young pretenders of their place in the pecking order

Neil Roden scored the fourth try and figured prominently in the build-up to the other six.

Smith opened the scoring out wide on the left midway through the first half and went on to crown a fine performance in which he provided a productive link between the half-backs on his inside and McCully and Ballard on his outer.

Noone did a similar job on the other side of the field and scored the sixth try himself.

The most remarkable story of the game featured Ballard, who didn't even know he was playing until several hours before kick-off.

Nursing a knee injury, he played with the knee strapped and used all his experience to score two first-half tries.

Roughyeds piled on 28 points without reply to put the game to bed.

Full-back Miles Greenwood gave his best performance so far. Leading 28-0 with the second half only two minutes old, Benson's men looked capable of running up a hefty score, but they then fell back into their old habit of conceding penalties.


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