DESPITE STIFF competition from rival clubs and the perennial problem of trying to balance the books, Oldham Rugby League Club is doing a good job of building a squad for next season that will be strong enough to more than hold its own in the newly-structured Kingstone Press League One.
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With five clubs coming down from the Championship – Keighley Cougars, North Wales Crusaders, Rochdale Hornets, Swinton Lions and Barrow Raiders – market forces have raised the bar on players’ pay expectations at each of the 14 clubs in the newly-named KP League One.
Some of the Oldham men who have already agreed and signed new deals were courted by other clubs, a clear indication that Roughyeds are managing to repel rivals’ raids, even if it means a bigger overall spend on first-team players in 2015.
Time will tell whether that will necessitate financial cuts elsewhere, but the club has been quick to refute any suggestion that the move to a smaller, more streamlined senior squad is a cost-cutting exercise.
At one point last season, Scott Naylor had 27 players on the books and he regularly had to disappoint as many as eight or nine players who had trained three times in any given week only to find they were kicking their heels without a game come the weekend.
He didn’t think that was fair on part-time professionals who have to juggle rugby commitments with full-time jobs.
As a consequence, it was decided to go with a smaller squad next season and with that in mind Paddy Mooney, Brett Robinson, Mark Hobson and Ben Wood were taken on one side and told they would not be offered new contracts.
Danny Whitmore had already shown his intentions several weeks before the end of the season when he lost his place to on-loan newcomer Gareth Owen and left the club of his own accord.
Following on from that, right-winger Mo Agoro signed for promoted Hunslet Hawks and left-winger Dale Bloomfield returned to his former club Rochdale Hornets.
Roughyeds have, however, re-signed most of the men they branded in the “must keep” category, headed by second-row pair Josh Crowley and Danny Langtree, arguably the hottest properties at Whitebank and two talented young forwards on whom other clubs had been casting envious eyes. Up against stiff competition, it was a real coup when it was announced that both had signed new, one-year deals.
And it went better over the course of the next two or three weeks when it emerged that Kenny Hughes, Steve Roper, David Cookson, Steven Nield and Michael Ward had also put pen to paper, each expressing the view that Oldham was a good club to play for and they were delighted to stay.
While all that work was going on behind the scenes with members of last season’s squad, chairman Chris Hamilton and coach Naylor took time out to snap up two newcomers in Jarrod Ward and Jake Hughes (no relation to Kenny).
Ward, a former Saddleworth Rangers junior, turned down numerous offers, some of them from Championship clubs, before opting to join Oldham on less money.
A strong-running winger or full-back, he was developed in the junior ranks at Salford and Bradford before joining Halifax, who loaned him out last season to Gloucester All Golds.
Jake Hughes, a half-back from Wigan amateur side Hindley, played in the Roughyeds’ reserves last season, and Naylor saw enough of him in games and on the training pitch to conclude that here was a young player with the potential to make the step-up to senior rugby.
The 18-year-old put pen to paper on his first pro contract to join 17-year-old Tom Dempsey and 21-year-old Richard Joy, who had previously signed deals contracting them to the club until the end of the 2015 campaign, as first-team new boys with the opportunity to prove they can hack it at senior level.
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