Sloppy opening costs Roughyeds

Photo: Tim Bradley

DIVING OVER . . . Full-back Richard Lepori scores Oldham's first try

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SOONER or later Oldham were bound to pay heavily for lethargic starts.

It's eight games since they last scored first, Kenny Hughes going in at Batley on June 5, and this was the third home game in a row that they found themselves 12-0 down while late-comers were still trudging up the Mottram Road.

It took Swinton 14 minutes to score two converted tries; Whitehaven only seven minutes; and Workington just quarter of an hour in which Jarrod Sammut scored one of his trademark solo specials and Marc Shackley exposed wafer-thin defence to add a second try, both converted by Sammut, Town's exceptionally-gifted midfield mastermind.

TEASING

His was an identical try to the one he scored when Oldham were beaten at Derwent Park in March. It had worked once for him, why not try it again. It worked a second time too ­- a teasing grubber to the posts, a lightning-fast chase and Town's talisman was celebrating his touchdown while Richard Lepori was still scrambling to get to the ball.

The Cumbrians doubled their tally when Shackley powered through weak goal-line tackling and Oldham, even at that early stage, had left themselves a mountain to climb.

In similar circumstances, they reached the summit first to beat Swinton and Whitehaven. They went close to snatching a third home win in a row here, eventually succumbing 32-30, but why, oh why, are they prone to giving opponents a head start before they accept its time to start work ?

That aspect of this performance was a worry, as was the pack's inability, or reluctance, to meet fire with fire when the big Cumbrian pack set about Oldham's forwards.

Substitute Tom Walker scored a brace of tries - the first after Graeme Mattinson punched a hole down the middle; the second when he made scoring look easy midway through the second half.

For much of the season Oldham have prided themselves on dogged defending and making it hard for opponents to score, but they were opened up on numerous occasions down the middle in the previous game at Bradford. They weren't such a soft-touch at Bower Fold yesterday, but they certainly fell well below the quality of defence as demonstrated in each of their seven Championship victories.

Adding to their first-half woes, they gave away penalties in their own half and made lots of mistakes when they had the ball, thus playing into the hands of a Town outfit that looked less stressed, more composed and more likely to edge a tight contest.

Oldham kept in touch with a Lepori try, fashioned by Gary Middlehurst, and, on the stroke of half-time, a Gareth Owen touchdown on Lewis Foster's grubber into the in-goal. David Hewitt converted both and, despite such a nervous first 40, Roughyeds were only eight points in arrears.

HOPES
The best had surely still to come and fans' hopes were raised by a stunning start to the second half in which Foster went from dummy half, offloaded to Danny Langtree and paved the way for Michael Ward to go under the posts. Hewitt's goal cut the deficit to 18-20.

Town wouldn't buckle, despite the best efforts of Ward and Kenny Hughes, and they restored their 14-point advantage with a 'soft' Walker try and another in the corner by Declan Hulme after Carl Forber's clever chip.

Totally overshadowed by Sammut earlier n the game, Forber came more into his own in the later stages when he too kicked Oldham to death.

To be fair, Oldham suffered major disruption when the dangerous Lepori was forced to quit with a hand injury just before half time.

Owen went to full-back, with his half-back role being shared by the two dummy-half specialists in Foster and Hughes ­- the latter as reliable and as dangerous as ever, the former prone to brilliance one minute, errors the next.

Hughes was at his best in the dying stages. Creditably, Oldham never once looked like throwing in the towel and they were rewarded when the hooker scored twice in three minutes to set up a grandstand finish in which Town hung on to chalk up a third win in a row, all of them by two points.