Oldham need show of steel in key battle

Adam Neal

FRIENDSHIPS will be put on hold for 90 minutes or so when Oldham and Sheffield Eagles square up in a Kingstone Press Championship relegation battle tonight (8pm kick-off) at the Hallam University Sports Park.

Not for the first, or even the second, time this season there was a large Eagles presence in the Bower Fold hospitality suite as recently as last Sunday when Scott Naylor's men beat Whitehaven to keep snapping at Sheffield's ankles in the bottom four.

Oldham coach Naylor and Eagles director of rugby Mark Aston are pals from their playing days, but inter-club links go much deeper than that.

Will Hope, Jon Ford and Gareth Owen have all had spells on loan at Sheffield, who signed Adam Neal and George Tyson from the Roughyeds on full-time contracts at the end of last season.

Ex-Oldham player Ged Corcoran, now on the Eagles coaching staff, was at the Oldham-Whitehaven game with Neal, Aston and Eagles director Chris Noble MBE, a close friend of Roughyeds chairman Chris Hamilton for many years.

NEAREST

Chris (Noble) is chief executive of Dukinfield-based Hanlon and Wright, national and international machinery relocation engineers, who regularly sponsor Oldham RLFC, the nearest rugby league club to the company's home base.

Ideally, each club would like to see the other escape relegation, but self survival transcends inter-club friendships.

Oldham weren't jumping through hoops when Eagles ended a run of six defeats in a row by trouncing Featherstone 35-10 last Friday night; nor were Mark Aston and Co. breaking open the champagne after watching Roughyeds pick up a couple of vital points against the Cumbrians.

That win was Oldham's first in eight league games so in that respect they will go into tonight's game, as will Sheffield, in much more confident mood than they would have been this time last week.

For the past couple of months Roughyeds have been struggling against an injury crisis which coincided with some of their toughest games of the season.

Sheffield's problems go far deeper than that.

They went full-time this year, but since then chairman Ian Swire has stepped aside and a major club investor has withdrawn his financial support.

OPERATION

The double whammy hit the club hard and cast doubts on whether Eagles would be able to continue as a full-time operation.

Aston went public with his passionate view that the club must continue to pursue its full-time ambitions ­- a massive project that will clearly require Eagles to stay in the Championship this season and, ultimately, to attract new investment.

The word is that new investors are showing interest, including a consortium from Australia with previous NRL experience.

In the meantime, Eagles know they are in an embarrassing position ­- fourth bottom and only two points outside the drop zone ­- when the other full-time outfits in the division are placed one, two and five.

Naylor said: "They wouldn't have expected to be where they are at this late stage of the season.

"They've been spending money recently to strengthen their squad and Mark (Aston) has been very busy behind the scenes bringing in the reinforcements he felt he needed.

"He felt last Friday's 35-10 win against Featherstone was his best performance of the season, so they will come out full of confidence and seriously expecting to win.

"We will too after our win against Whitehaven so it promises to be a very good game."