We can do better, says boss

A STEELY determination that runs right through his squad will serve Oldham well in the Championship, said Scott Naylor after Roughyeds kept hold of the Law Cup.

The game completed a pre-season programme in which Naylor’s men lost 16-8 at Keighley, romped to a

22-0 triumph at Barrow and then saw off derby rivals Rochdale in their own backyard.

They know that tougher challenges lie ahead, hence Naylor’s focus on a second half in which Hornets hit back strongly after looking dead and buried at half-time.

“Our first-half performance won us the game,” he said. “It was good to lift the Law Cup again, but we crawled home on what we did in the first 40 and we can learn a very important lesson from that.

“There are reasons and mitigating factors for how we fell away a bit. In the wet conditions there were a lot of mistakes and it became a stop-start affair.

“On top of that I made changes to give the whole squad plenty of game time. That disrupted things a bit.

“We gave some of the lads time and we were rewarded with some really good individual performances.

“Even so, we didn’t do as well as we should in controlling the second half on our big lead.

“We gave Rochdale too much ball and too much field position, which put us under a lot of pressure and resulted in us spending far too long defending on our goal line.

“We did it superbly, as we did at Barrow, and that’s a big positive to come out of this Law Cup game.”