Clay looking to bounce back

ADAM CLAY . . . recovered from illness and expected to take his place in the starting line-up against Batley.

Adam Clay has three reasons for hoping Oldham can cause an upset by beating in-form Batley Bulldogs at Bower Fold on Sunday.

The Roughyeds’ top try scorer acknowledges that after disappointing defeats by Halifax and Swinton Lions over Easter, Scott Naylor’s men owe it to the club, the fans and themselves to bounce back.

Secondly, he wants to make amends for how low he felt when he pulled out of the Swinton game due to

sickness only three days after playing a major role in the fight back against Halifax.

And he is keen to show that even against a quality side like the Bulldogs — joint Championship leaders with only one defeat in seven games — he can make a big impact in helping his forwards out of defence on exit sets.

“Even for a winger, it isn’t all about try scoring in the modern game,” said the deceptively fast,

heavily-built Clay - top-scorer in the 2015 promotion season and ahead in 2016.

“It’s always nice to score, but I like to think I get stuck in when helping in yardage sets. You’ve got to do your share of the heavy stuff, but that comes with experience, knowing that it’s part of your job to try to get the team on the front foot.”

He’ll have plenty of that to do against a Bulldogs side which has taken the Championship by storm this season under the command of John Kear, the man who famously led rank outsiders Sheffield Eagles to a Challenge Cup final triumph against mighty Wigan Warriors at Wembley.

“He’s got Batley playing some great stuff,” said Clay. “We are looking for a big response after what happened in the Easter games. We owe ourselves a performance we can be proud of and it would be great to do it for the club and the supporters to.”

Fans were disappointed by Clay’s recent absence: “I was flattened by a bug over the weekend and it knocked me for six for two or three days,” he explained. “I felt awful at withdrawing from the squad, but there was nothing else I could do.”

He was still on the sick list when players and coaching staff got together the next night to talk about what went wrong at Heywood Road. By last night’s session he was fully recovered and raring to go.