Naylor's vow

Photo: Dave Murgatroyd

A DEJECTED Gareth Owen applauds the Oldham fans after defeat by Rochdale.

COACH Scott Naylor insists he will do everything in his powers to try to solve Oldham RL's disturbing habit of spewing winning positions.

Following on from the Batley collapse six days earlier, another two Kingstone Press Championship points were thrown away when the Roughyeds fell apart in the second half of their Summer Bash clash against big rivals Rochdale.

Despite clutching a 14-point lead at half-time, the Roughyeds were well-beaten in the end by a Hornets team who had not won any of their previous 10 league and cup games.

Naylor said: "It must by psychological.

"The warm-up is fine, training is fine, the lads are fine, half-time is fine.

"There is something going on in that I need to genuinely try to do something completely different, out of the box, change or help in some way.

"There is something going on with us when we start making mistakes. We just don't just make one mistake, we compound it by giving away a penalty in the next set and we'll let in six points.

"PENALTY"

"Then we kick-off and give away a penalty and then we get the ball back and make a mistake. It's not just one thing, it's mistake after mistake.

"Whether it's mental or physical, it's having a massive impact on us as a team, that's it's so negative it's impossible to get momentum back in games.

"We never have a spell of five or 10 minutes when the game just ebbs and flows - it's just us defending and us without the ball.

"It's like a snowball effect, but this is nothing new to us, this is a continuous theme, and when it doesn't happen we win games.

"So far, in five years at the club when we get things right on the pitch, both mentally and physically, nobody has beat us."

The defeat meant Oldham missed the chance to put some daylight between themselves and Hornets.

Naylor added: "At the end of the day, if could haves, would haves been alright, we would be in the top six.

"At present we're ninth and it's by us. It's not by the teams who we've played against. It's all to do with us.

"It's our fault, it's my fault. It's the team's fault. It's all to do with us and what we're doing on the field and until we sort out those basics and I mean absolute basics that you learn as an amateur player, we will continue to lose games.

"We talk about it every week, we work on it every week. You can see we can do it. We do it for 40 minutes, we did last week against Batley, we can do it.

"Show the courage to defend your own line. Don't let in points and then if the other teams scores, don't give a penalty away in the next set. It's really hurting us."

Oldham's day went from bad to worse when Sam Gee was dismissed in the last minute by referee Liam Moore. Hornets' Danny Yates was sent to the sin-bin after the incident.

Naylor said: "Sam is not happy. He told me something was said to him, which is poor I'm afraid, so I will speak to Sam and look into it and decide what we are going to do.

"I've known Sam for over five years and he's not that kind of person. There's only a couple of reasons why he would lose his rag like that."