ROUGHYEDS boss Stuart Littler believes his side showed attitude in the 18-4 victory over North Wales Crusaders at Stadium Eirias at the weekend.
Oldham were made to fight for the victory, with North Wales regularly asking questions of the Roughyeds defence.
“I thought we scrambled really well. At times, though, we could have closed the game off and we probably invited them back into the game and gave them a bit of a hand up,” said Littler.
“Getting a win here is something we didn’t do last year, so we’re delighted. We showed attitude and togetherness in our defence. We probably got a bit more practice in defence than we wanted, but we’ll learn from that.”
Understandably, Littler’s men were — in his own words — clunky in attack, after having not played for three weeks.
Emmerson Whittel played the majority of the game, which was his first in six months, as Littler was forced into changes when Deane Meadows went off injured mid-way through the game.
“The lads did some big minutes in the middle to cover that loss, we dug in and were resilient. A buzz-word through pre-season has been grit, and we demonstrated that in our defensive actions,” he said.
“We made a couple of opportunities today but we just didn’t quite nail the final pass, it looked a bit clunky at times and we’ve got to work on that and be a bit more fluent.
“The plan wasn’t for Emmerson to play that long, but sometimes the plans go out of the window with injuries.
“It will be good for him to get that in his tank and he will get better week to week now.”
Alex Sutton and Logan Astley, on dual-registration from Wigan, got themselves on the scoresheet and Littler was impressed with their performances.
“Logan was filling in for Gregg McNally today and he did well. He has some real pace to burn and when he gets in space, he takes some catching.
“We’re appreciative of our partnership with Wigan and I thought Alex Sutton, again, was great and worked hard for us all day.”
