Acton out of action

FORMER Oldham RL forward Jamie Acton, now at Workington, will miss his new club’s first four games of 2013 after a bizarre sequence of events involving Roughyeds and the Cumbrians at the end of last season.

Oldham kept their play-off hopes alive with a 28-18 win at Whitebank in which fiery front-row forward Acton produced a superb performance before he and Workington full-back Elliott Miller were sent off for fighting near the end of the game.

Acton submitted an early guilty plea to the RFL disciplinary committee and accepted a one-match ban which ruled him out of the side in the next game at Gateshead, but enabled him to return for the play-off clash . . . at Workington. 

Three minutes into the game he was sin-binned for a late challenge, but returned to the field to turn in another stirring display of hard-yards running in a game which Roughyeds were desperately unlucky to lose to a fortuitous Town try in the dying seconds.

Play was held up at one point when Town forward Jarrad Stack drew the referee’s attention to a mark on his arm, claiming he had been bitten by Acton, who was at Wigan Warriors before joining Oldham.

Undeterred, Workington courted and ultimately signed the 21-year-old Londoner, who has since admitted the offence against Stack while pleading guilty to the RFL’s grade ‘E’ charge of biting.

He was suspended for four games and fined £50.