OLDHAM RLFC is already looking to the future, even though the dust is just settling on the 2025 season.
The Roughyeds finished fourth in the Championship, but their play-off hopes ended with a crushing 40-4 home defeat to Halifax.
However, thoughts are already turning to what lies ahead, not least away from the field.
Now the rugby league club is back at the heart of its community, building on that is the priority – not least because it is still bidding for a place in Super League for 2026.
Chairman Bill Quinn said: “It was difficult. It was a body blow, but my attitude is we’ll analyse it then we’ll go forward. We will learn from it. We will be better next season.
“We’ve put a Super League bid in. Think back two-and-a-half years, which is not a long time, and where the club was – where we were playing, where we were training, the team we had the people we had around us.
“To see where we are as a club, not just as a team, you can’t but think to yourself, ‘Wow.’
“But we won’t go backwards, we will go forwards.”
Oldham have paused recruitment for 2026 as they await to hear whether their Super League bid – either through strategic partner IMG’s grading scheme or an independent panel that will decide whether to extend the top flight from 12 to 14 clubs – is successful.
But the ethos is ‘go forward’ with the Roughyeds looking to ‘push more’ and even if they do not make it this year, the door is not shut forever.
Part of that is to make sure the best talent in Oldham – a town that has produced some of the very best players rugby league has seen, like Paul Sculthorpe and Kevin Sinfield – is not lost to its hometown club.
And a new scheme for college students will see them form much closer links, as they will be at their Netpar Training Centre in Chadderton a lot more.
Managing director Mike Ford detailed to the club: “We’ve partnered with Oldham College and Oldham Sixth Form College and our first competition – a nines competition – will be on November 12.
“We’re going to get all the best kids, from under 16s to under-18s, hopefully playing here two or three times a week, paying on a Wednesday against ither college.
“The idea is for us to get more hands-on with the best kids. While the pathway at the moment is once every two weeks, we’ll get them several times a week.
“It’s exciting. It’s the first ever, so we’ll adapt along the way, but we’ll be competing with other colleges in a competition from January onwards.
“It’s exciting times for us off the field.”
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