It's just three weeks and counting for (injured) Naylor

Recovering from a snapped Achilles: Scott Naylor

It’s now less than three weeks until Oldham Roughyeds’ first pre-season appearance at the Vestacare Stadium on Sunday, January 20.

Scott Naylor’s men entertain derby rivals Rochdale Hornets (3pm kick-off) in a bid to hang on to the Law Cup trophy which they won at the Crown Oil Arena a year ago.

It should be a cracker and club officials are hoping all Roughyeds fans will do their best to attend what will be the first Law Cup clash in Oldham for several years.

For most fans (those who don’t travel to Barrow on January 13) it will be the first opportunity to see the Roughyeds’ many new players in action.

After a short break over Christmas, the players were back in for training last Saturday morning.

They will be in again on Thursday and after that they will resume their usual Tuesday/Thursday/Saturday schedule throughout the four-match pre-season programme with games on January 13 (Barrow away), January 20 (Rochdale Hornets home), January 27 (Swinton away) and February 3 (Newcastle home).

Head coach Naylor is happy with how things are going in pre-season training, although he is currently on crutches himself, and wearing a surgical boot, after snapping an Achilles in training.

“I hope to have the boot off by the middle of February, but it will probably be the end of April or the beginning of May before my rehab is finished and I’m completely over it,” Naylor said.

“I’m still getting to training sessions and overseeing everything and I’ve got good men around me in Pete Carey, Paul Crook and Adam Neal.

“Adam is enjoying doing his conditioning and he has brought a lot to the role now he has retired as a player and he can concentrate solely on that one job.

“I’m very happy with the way things are going, but at this stage we’ve no dual reg and we still need one or two more players.

“I’m really happy with the squad we’ve assembled so far, but I’m hoping to bring in two more lads to give the squad a bit more depth.

“We need to start strongly because we’ve deliberately gone for a tough pre-season programme and then we’ve got an equally tough start to the new League 1 programme with Workington and Whitehaven giving us all-Cumbrian opposition in our opening two games.”

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