THREE FACTORS will go a long way to determining what sort of a season promoted Oldham RL Club can look forward to in their first taste of the sport’s second tier since 2006.
It’s always been a massive leap for any club moving up from Kingstone Press League One to the Championship, but all the more so since the RFL restructured their divisions, reduced Super League and the Championship each to 12 clubs and brought back promotion and relegation.
As a consequence, former Super League big boys Bradford Bulls and London Broncos are two of four full-time professional outfits which will be strongly fancied to take Championship 2016 by storm along with the other full-timers, Leigh Centurions and Sheffield Eagles.
The other eight clubs – Halifax, Featherstone Rovers, Dewsbury Rams, Workington Town, Whitehaven, Batley Bulldogs and promoted Oldham and Swinton Lions – will comprise mainly of players who will be working all week and who will train a couple of evenings and Saturday mornings.
The imbalance doesn’t end there. The amount of RFL central funding allocated to clubs this year is governed by where you finished in 2015. The higher you finished the more you receive in RFL hand-outs, with Oldham and Swinton Lions moving up as poor relations and coming in at the bottom end of the financial allocation.
And we’re not talking small change here; we’re talking big bucks!
Shortly after steering Roughyeds to promotion last September, coach Scott Naylor famously said: “If we stay up, I should be coach of the year!”
He didn’t know it at the time, but within days he was named League One coach of the year after a season in which Roughyeds won 19 of their 22 league games, finished top and then beat Keighley in a first versus second play-off to win promotion and end nine years of third-tier heartache.
Championship rugby will be a whole new ball game . . . for Hemel read Halifax; for Barrow read Bradford.
Naylor has enough experience and nous to know that it will be a mental challenge, as much as a physical one, for a side that isn’t used to taking a hammering and then having to regroup for an equally demanding challenge seven days later.
Significantly, he allowed young on-loan half-back David Hewitt to return to his parent club St Helens (he has since moved on to Sheffield) and replaced him with 29-year-old Danny Grimshaw from Hunslet Hawks, who becomes the squad’s senior citizen, just a few months older than another half-back, Steve Roper.
Experience in the crucial half-back role is clearly thought to be a key element of survival in the higher division.
But many would argue there are three even bigger factors:
1; Injuries or, hopefully, only few of them. With a squad of 21 Roughyeds can ill afford bad luck in the knocks department. In the three years under Naylor they’ve had few serious setbacks. The good run needs to continue.
2; There needs to be a big impact from the four new signings – Grimshaw, who made an excellent start in the friendlies; winger Jamel Chisholm (raw but with bags of potential); and the two new forwards, Craig Briscoe and Jack Spencer.
3; Naylor will be looking also to get the best possible benefits from his club’s partnership with Huddersfield Giants and the agreement on Oldham’s use of their younger players on dual registration. Oldham did well out of the arrangement last season. It needs to work at least equally well in a division where standards and abilities are so much higher.
It all starts this Sunday (Feb 7) when Oldham entertain London Broncos at Bower Fold, Stalybridge (3pm) in round one. All Roughyeds’ home games will be at the home of Stalybridge Celtic FC, a handy location for fans with cars who live in Saddleworth’s villages.
It’s going to be a season of highs and lows; ups and downs. But you can be sure of this: it’s going to be a real humdinger, packed full of good-quality rugby league at a cracking stadium which, in Naylor’s own words, ‘blew me away’, when he gave it the once-over.
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