OLDHAM RL club head into April on the back of an unbeaten start to their 2014 campaign.
With three wins and a draw from four outings, Scott Naylor’s men have produced good results without ever convincing the boss that performances are as he would like them.
The 18-4 win in South Wales on the opening day of Kingstone Press Championship One was followed by a 20-20 draw at Whitebank against Hemel Stags, a 42-24 triumph against Cumbrian amateurs Egremont in the Tetley’s Challenge Cup and a too-close-for-comfort 18-16 win at London Skolars.
While delighted that his boys sit second in the league with eight points from a possible nine – and face a potentially lucrative fourth-round cup tie at Bradford Bulls of Super League – Naylor is concerned that “something is missing” in his side’s level of performance.
Speaking after the win in London, he said: “We’re not clicking as a team at the moment. It’s great to be grinding out the right results, but we haven’t yet put in a good, 80-minute performance and that’s very frustrating for a coach.
“When we solve the problem and get to the bottom of it we are going to be a very good team indeed in our division, as we were last year, but we need to get it sorted sooner rather than later.
“We’ve no game now until we go to Bradford for the cup tie on Sunday, April 6 so we’ll use the time to work on various things and to chat about various things.”
The cup tie at Odsal will be a trip down Memory Lane for Naylor, who had five seasons with the Bulls at a period when they were one of the strongest teams in Super League.
He played in three Challenge Cup finals for them at Murrayfield, Twickenham and the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff during the time when Wembley was being rebuilt.
“I’m looking forward to going back to Odsal and seeing so many old friends,” he said, “but I have to stress that this isn’t about me. It’s about the Oldham players looking forward to going head to head with Super League opposition in one of the most iconic stadiums in the country.
“It will be a fantastic experience for them and one they need to enjoy.”
April will be an important one as far as league competition is concerned. Consecutive cup ties on the road at Egremont and Bradford means Roughyeds have had only one home game since the season started on March 2 and they won’t have another until Gateshead Thunder visit Whitebank on April 13.
That will be five weeks between home fixtures which is not good for cash flow and all the more reason why the club will be looking for a decent gate for the match against the Tynesiders.
By then, Naylor will be hoping to have got his team playing to the standard he expects because on Good Friday (April 18) he takes his boys to face one of the toughest away fixtures of the season at Hunslet Hawks, who were relegated from the Championship at the end of last term and have since gone to significant lengths in order to put together a squad which they believe will be good enough to launch a serious promotion bid this time.
That sort of ambition is uppermost in Naylor’s mind too.
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