The Phantom Horseman

Houles has been consitently excellent and a measure of how good he ha sbeen is that he has got results out of some fairly moderate squads as well as the really good ones (eg the talent-filled 2021 team). For me the jury is still out on Long, in each of his 3 years coaching he has had the most expensively-assembled squad, or close to it (certainly in 2023 and 2024, and definitely one of the top 3 or 4 squads in terms of cost this year you'd think).

It's only "mental" if you think Oldham's priority is the attendance. If the priority is winning the game, it gives them a significant advantage because they will get to play Halifax or Fev, both of whom have very small squads ((and thus limited options to rest players), just 5 days after they have played. Recovery time is crucial in such a physical game as RL and having an advantage like that at this stage of the season is gold dust.

With the regular season over, I was trying to work out who the nominees might be in the 3 end-of-season awards categories. For player of the season, my guess is that Liam Harris, Jordan Thompson and Olly Ashall-Bott are amongst the strongest candidates to make the short list, with Harris the likeliest winner. Maybe Josh Drinkwater will get a nomination. For the coaching award, Mark Applegarth, Kyle Eastmond, and possibly Paul Cooke (or maybe Paul Crary) were the likeliest nominees off the top of my head. The coach of the league leaders/best team doesn't always win it, and rightly so, but I think Applegarth will this year. Young player of the year is harder, I think it's for players aged 21 or under at the start of the season, but I might be wrong about that. I think Phoenix Laulu-Togogae might qualify in which case he has a good chance of being nominated and probably of winning it, he's one of very few under 22s (at the start of the season) who has played over 20 games for his team. Baptiste Rodriguez is another obvious candidate, then there are a few players who might not have made their team every week but have played a fair amount such as Bailey Aldridge, Romeo Tropis, Jensen Monk; I'm also not sure how many games you are meant to have played (eg George Whitby and Will Roberts probably haven't played enough for Halifax or Widnes respectively to merit nomination you'd think). So I'm struggling with this category a bit.

Just as an aside, I can't remember reading as many complimentary comments about a set of away supporters on the Fev fan pages on Facebook etc as I have about the Oldham fans since Sunday.

It will certainly affect the away crowd as trying to get across the Pennines on the M62 on a Friday night is a bit of a fool's errand especially for people who have been at work that day.

Absolutely, it will hit the away following dramatically you'd think, but am just not sure that's what the rulebook says. Oldham have stated an 8pm kick off perhaps with that in mind.

Haha great minds etc as that was the first thing I had looked at too. Seems like it only applies for clubs facing extremely long journeys unless I have read it wrong?

Yep my bad. I remember looking at the fixtures before this weekend and got Widnes's final game mixed up with Halifax's. And yes I can't see Doncaster beating Halifax, I watched some of Donny's game with York and whilst York looked in top form and were really good, some of Doncaster's defence was embarrassing, I see they had their player of the season awards on Friday night which seems strange timing, it's like they've already put a line through the season. Yes Bradford do seem to give teams a chance, I think so far you have been proved right in your pre-season assessment of them, I thought they would top the table but 3rd is about where they deserve to be. I'm not sure we match up with them as well as we do with some other teams as their strength is in winning the physical contact, but as Cooke said after the Oldham game, if we can replicate that form we can trouble anyone. (I've edited my previous comment as it had incorrect info on the remaining fixtures, basically I was just saying that if we end up playing Oldham they have announced that game will take place on the Friday evening, 19th September).

edited as contained incorrect info

Well, there's obsessed, and then there's starting threads on the general forum about overdue accounts and some tempororary closures of parts of the ground at a club you don't support...

Yeah, me too. When our completion rates and discpline are as good as they were today, we're a useful team.

On another note, think Paul Cooke deserves a fair bit of credit for getting Fev into the play-offs after the start we had to the season. Difficult game to assess today as it was a dead rubber for Oldham and they didn't have Drinkwater or Brierley, but Fev overcame the key absence of Hampshire (and Glover) and pretty much dominated throughout, Oldham barely made it inside Fev's 30m barring the two tries. I don't think any Fev fans are wildly optimistic about next week's game against Bradford or the play-offs given Hampshire, Reynolds and 3rd string half Turner will all be missing, but hopefully we can give it a good shot.

Well done to York, they've been the best and most consistent team in the division and the right team has topped the league. I'm tempted to say that in an ideal world that would seal their place in SL, and it should certainly help, but at least they don't have to worry quite as much as in the previous system about one off day in the play-offs wrecking their chance. They really should be one of the 3 getting the nod.

Well that was good, wasn't it? I know Oldham didn't have Drinkwater and Brierley but obviously we were without Hampshire and Glover too, and although it was a dead rubber for them they would all have been playing for places in the play-offs and that was probably our best performance for a good few weeks. Oldham's two tries were about the only time they were inside our 20 all game, we pretty much dominated them throughout. I don't think any of us (me included) were recommending that we play Addy at half back, but fair play to Cookey as Addy contributed plenty alongside Reynolds who had a fine game. It might well be a different story next week and in the play-offs as we will have zero recognised halves, but after the start we had I think that's no mean achievement to reach the play-offs.

That video's well worth a watch, by the way. Lots of interesting stuff (Cooke pulls no punches about the red card incident from last week for instance) and on the subject of the squad,towards the end he mentions that he thinks the club is roughly at around 22 players that have agreed to contracts for next year.

Yes I'd agree with that. I think the difference is that when injuries come along we don't have anything like the depth or resources that you do. We haven't made any significant signings in the 2nd half of the season compared with the six or seven Oldham have added in the last 2 or 3 months, and as a result our team on Sunday will have some players playing out of poisition.

Well as Turner was helped off the field at Sheffield with a serious-looking injury, which was widely reported after the game, and given Cooke pretty much said in his post-game interview that his season was over, I think even Salford, let alone Oldham, knew Turner wouldn't be playing this week.

Yeah his ban kicks in the week after. Will miss the Bradford game and the play-offs, if we reach them.

"95% of people who visited our website say they'd come to watch us in SL". I really hope they aren't going to present that as part of the bid.

I'll be pleasantly surprised if it's as close as that. We (Fev) have been really poor in the last 2 games since losing Hampshire, the strength of our team during the good mid-season run has been having two good halves and when teams know they can focus on just one side it makes us much less threatening. There are likely to be one or two enforced positional changes for Fev and I can see this fixture being the reverse of the 1895 semi, when Oldham were struggling with injuries whereas Fev were approaching full strength.

Not officially. We probably don't have 21 fully fit players at the moment so being in the 21 isn't necessarily a guarantee of full fitness. Of course, clubs don't always reveal injury details because it makes things harder for their opponents to prepare for them if they don't know who they're facing (in similar vein, that's why Paul Cooke hasn't stated publicly who will start at half back this weekend).

The better argument for what? The survey just says "we are keen to know how much the town is backing Oldham RLFC," but are you suggesting they might try and use this in support of the SL application?

Ben Reynolds' case, unsurprisingly, has been referrred to tribunal after being given a Grade E designation for foul and abusive language to an official. Barring unexpected developments that will be a long ban (think 6 games off the top of my head is the entry point) so season over for him after this weekend, and possibly a carry-over into next season (though 2 pre-season games will be eligible to count).

If Reynolds gets suspended we are going to need two position switches not one for the Bradford game and the play-offs, if we reach them. For me it's a toss-up between Aekins and Addy this week, neither is ideal, but neither is anything else - we've seen enough of Connor Jones to know he isn't a half back and also Jubby's struggling with fitness, I don't know if O'Connor has played half back at all at senior level whereas we do know he has played full back plenty of times. Tuimavave has actually played half back in a challenge cup final albeit nearly 10 years ago but has there been any recent indication that he's going to return this season?

Nobody wants to move Aekins from full back, and nobody thinks he is better at half back than full back, but half back is the most important position on the field, if you don't have somebody who knows the calls and can direct the shape of the attack you can't do much other than one-out rugby, which isn't going to cut much ice at this level. There's certainly a case for switching Addy rather than Aekins, but assuming Reynolds gets a ban today, that would only cover us for this week, not next week, when we're probably going to need both of them at half back. At this level, Aekins is a 9 out of 10 full back and probably only a 7 out of 10 half back at best, but in my opinion we don't have anyone else outside of Reynolds, Hampshire and Turner who is even a 5 out of 10 half back.