Experience is missing ingredient for Saints

RUGBY: AFTER four competitive games, Oldham St Anne’s should be in good shape for the start of the National Conference League Division Three season.

Three of those games have already been played and the fourth, against crack NCL outfit Rochdale Mayfield in the last four of the Napier Windows Standard Cup, is tonight at Castleton (kick-off 7.30pm).

Results and performances have been promising so far. Saints defeated Folly Lane in round one of the Standard Cup, while in the BARLA National Cup they overcame West Leeds before slipping up at home to Myton Warriors.

The Higginshaw Road club will have to find enough players to fulfil both first and ‘A’ team fixtures in 2016 but, far from being daunted by the prospect, they see it as a chance to blood some of their promising under-18s.

New Saints coach Sean Whitehead has been pleased with the turn-out for training — “numbers have been good. We could do with a bit of experience but that probably goes for a lot of sides at our level.

“As for the strength of the division, we won’t know until a few weeks in.”