Naylor is a man in a hurry

FIT FOR THE FIGHT . . . Oldham players are put through their paces at training last night.

OLDHAM are determined to win promotion and finish the job they started when Scott Naylor walked into Whitebank for the first time on a cold, wet night in October 2012.

He arrived on a two-year contract to take up his first head coach appointment at a club prepared to give him a chance. He had been on the staff at Salford for a year or two but was coaching at Leigh Rugby Union club when Oldham and Tony Benson parted company a few weeks before the end of a 2012 season in which Roughyeds had won only seven of 18 games.

Naylor met Oldham chairman Chris Hamilton for the first time at the job interview - and made an immediate impression on the club’s owner.

Hamilton liked what his applicant had to say and how he said it — straight, to the point and forceful enough for the chairman to believe this was a coach to take the dressing room by the scruff of the neck and give it the shake-up it needed.

He said later: “There were times during the meeting when I thought he was interviewing me. I liked that. And there was something about him that convinced me he was just the right man for the job.”

Three seasons on, that “right man for the job” is a year into his second contract — this time a three-year agreement — and has just been named Kingstone Press League One coach of the year.

A glance at what he has achieved shows why. His team finished second in 2013, third in 2014, top in 2015, reached grand finals in his first two years and now stands on the threshold of the Championship at the third attempt.

Over the three years, Naylor’s men have won 46 and drawn two of 58 league games, picking up 127 league points out of a possible 152.

But the most stunning statistic is their league record at Whitebank: played 29, won 24, drawn two, lost three. Two of those three defeats were in the first two years of Naylor’s reign, against Rochdale and Oxford, and the only other, by North Wales in June this year, was the first in more than two years.

Naylor, though, is a man in a hurry and it still rankles that he failed at the final hurdle in each of the last two grand finals.

“On Sunday we need to finish the job we should have finished two years ago,” he said. “This time we are at home. A lot of people are not too keen on coming to Whitebank, but we like it. The losers get another chance, but we want to get the job finished at the first time of asking.

“Having said that, Keighley will want to do the same, and it shows how much quality they have that they’ve pushed us all the way in the race for top place.”

Two things for sure; with the best defence in the division, Oldham won’t fall for Handforth’s dummy like they did at Cougar Park; and, as March has promised, Cougars will be significantly stronger and more experienced than they were on their last visit to Whitebank.

It’s high time Oldham had the last laugh.