The Phantom Horseman

We've named our 20-man squad, basically all we've got left with the injuries to Hampshire, Turner and Tuimavave and the suspension of Reynolds, and of course we're not sure if Glover is fit to play. Bradford have named their 21 via the RFL match centre, they are missing one or two but most of the squad they have named have been first team regulars this year, presumably they didn't really have the option of naming a squad of kids etc as in the very unlikely event that Toulouse lose at Hunslet on Saturday a win would take Bradford into second place and give them a first-round bye in the play-offs. https://www.rugby-league.com/match-centre/match-preview/2298930

Doncaster held their player of the season awards last week which I thought was a bit weird, talk about drawing a line under the season before it was over. York were strolling through them in the second half of their game at the weekend, don't get me wrong York were very good but the defence for a lot a lot of the tries Doncaster conceded was feeble. You do wonder if most of their thoughts will be on Mad Monday this weekend.

Well, if they beat the team that has lost all 3 half backs, they'll probably get to play them again at home a few days later, as Doncaster look to have mailed the season in now. The overall evidence suggests that Fev with Reynolds and Hampshire are probably a better team than Halifax, but without both, they're probably a worse team.

What's the source? If it's Facebook, it's usually best to take it it with a big grain of salt.

Yeah that was borderline and you'll see that given as a penalty plenty of times. Oldham had been given a penalty earlier in the set for a tackle by Clay Webb that I thought looked less of a penalty than the Addy one, so maybe he was reluctant to give a second penalty so quickly.

I don't know but this fixture has always been scheduled for a Sunday. As far back as March Bradford were advertising that they would have 6 Friday night home games but this wasn't scheduled to be one of them. Rumour is Bradford will be also be choosing Friday night for the play-off game againsy us or Fax too though I haven't seen that officially confirmed yet.

I think you're probably right and certainly the 1895 semi it obviously was a long way from being a full-strength Oldham team. Injuries certainly played a part in the Championship year, my own team Fev looked a very different proposition once we had our 2 decent halves playing together, having been I think second from bottom after the first six games.

One thing that was interesting about this week's game was that both Fev and Oldham did their own video recordings of the game so the footage isn't identical on both (though that knock on looked a knock on from every angle!). There were a couple of things that I noticed on one set of highlights that is less obvious on the other, I've included the Fev highlights below but the Oldham ones are available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CwLR5fyIoA For the opening penalty - you don't get as good a view here on the Fev highlights as it's a closer shot than on the Oldham ones, but Caleb Aekins 100% spotted (or heard the ref call) that Laulu-Togogae was offside and led Springer directly back at him, on the Oldham footage you can actually see Aekins clapping as soon as PLT made contact and before the ref even gave the penalty. For Olpherts' try the communication between Addy and his left edge was important (you can only see this on the Fev video not the Oldham one) - Addy first signals that he's kicking across to the right hand side but then gestures to O'Connor and Olpherts to stay onside and they both did a really good job of hanging back until the kick was launched as it's so easy to be offside when the kicker has had to drop back seven or eight yards to give himself space. Basic stuff but wings and centres often get that wrong. Then for O'Connor's first try, the Oldham replay just shows the action from the play-the-ball, but I think the carry before that was really important. Vuniyayawa swerved to his left when carrying the ball, won the collision and sucked in two of the four right-hand edge defenders (Lannon and Smith). That left Oldham with little time to reorganise and although Smith went back to the right hand side, Fev had a four on three from the play-the-ball, the centre guessed wrong and stayed with O'Connor, and Reynolds put Webb through the gap leading to a spectacular 60m try. O'Connor's second try - for me here the key play was by Ben Reynolds, he makes a great defensive read and jams in on Morgan Smith who has to rush his pass. If he completes that pass Oldham have 4 against 2 and there's a good chance the score goes to 14-12, instead the ball goes loose from Smith's rushed pass and Bailey does the rest, taking the score to 20-6. Beckett's try was another example of how winning the ruck and getting a fast PTB can help open up the defence, the two players who completed the tackle on Gaz Gale were all at sea trying to take up their positions on that next play (they weren't even close to being square) and when Addy dropped it off to Beckett there was a huge gap because they hadn't set their defensive line properly. (am sure this is really boring to some so apologies but as regular readers of the forum will know I quite like this geeky stuff and trying to work out why things happen in RL).

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.