Naylor frustrated as defence is exposed

CONTEST: Adam Clay (right) and Garry Lo

SCOTT Naylor felt Oldham could easily have picked up two precious league points despite Sheffield's 42-28 triumph.

"That might sound a bit daft when you look at the score, but if we had defended as tough on the fringes as we did in the middle I believe we would be celebrating a home-and-away league double," said the Roughyeds' boss.

He went on: "I'm disappointed because we didn't do ourselves justice. Our fringes struggled massively and we made Menzie Yere and Garry Lo look like world-beaters.

"The lads in the middle worked really hard and it must have been frustrating for them to see Sheffield's outside backs scoring so many points.

"At least we know what we have to do next time we play Sheffield in the Shield, but it's frustrating we didn't do this time.

"We were always confident we would score points against them, but we also spoke about what we needed to do to keep their attack quiet. We didn't do that part of the job and we allowed them to score some really soft tries.

"It's not like us to let in tries down the fringes, but we did here and it cost us. If you score 28 points away from home that should be good enough to win.

"Menzie and Lo threatened on the first play of the game and they were still doing it after 79 minutes. We couldn't handle them on our right side. Perhaps we need to take these one-on-one challenges more personally. Menzie does, that's for sure."

Sheffield boss Mark Aston wasn't entirely happy either. He had the two league points to act as a buffer, but he described conceding 28 points at home as "same time, same place, same old story.

He added: "I like to entertain and I have no qualms about how we attack. But you've got to defend in rugby too and we are very inconsistent.

"I don't know how much more of this I can take. We've eight games left. Let's play 'em all in the next eight days and I can start rebuilding.

"I hate all this inconsistency. It's just not me."