OLDHAM new boys Jamie Ellis, Jordan Turner and Joe Wardle, who have made nearly 300 Super League games between them, can be viewed as a guide for things to come.
With a new head coach still to be appointed and an understanding there are more players still to be signed — there has to be given that 14 are going — excitement is mounting by the day as fans wait for announcements.
Media releases will be put out by the five-man board as soon as news is available, chairman Bill Quinn having already said:
“We are building what we believe will be a very competitive Championship team,” writes ROGER HALSTEAD.
He added:
“I’m a bit wiser than when I was here last time. I know talk is fine, but we have to deliver; we have to do what we are saying we will do. We are merely doing what others have done across the last 150 years and being conscious of that is important to us.
“My role is to work with the board and it’s important that we reconnect with the town and with the town’s amateur clubs.
“I want this club to stand on its own feet and with you (the fans) behind us I’m sure we’ll achieve it.
“In 2026 the club will be 150 years old and that’s a year that will be very important to us. With the team we are putting together for next year, we would hope to be very successful.”
The club has already asked publicly for volunteer tradesmen to help to develop facilities at Melrose which will shortly become a training base for the ambitious Roughyeds.
The club is looking to start work at Melrose Playing Fields in Chadderton and, in the first instance, is seeking help from electricians and plumbers to be followed, hopefully, by volunteer joiners, builders and roofers.
Anyone interested in helping the club is asked to email managing director Mike Ford at: mike.ford@roughyeds.co.uk
Turner, meanwhile, has spoken to fans about the highlights of his long career at the top level, which he named, after much thought, as playing for St Helens against Wigan in the Super League Grand Final of 2014 at Old Trafford; playing for Castleford against St Helens in the Challenge Cup Final of 2021 at Wembley; and also playing for Jamaica and for England Knights.
He played for Saints v Wigan at Old Trafford at loose-forward behind Kyle Amor, James Roby, and Mose Masoe in the front-row and behind Louie McCarthy-Scarsbrook and Iosia Soliola in the second-row. Seven years later, at Wembley, he played on the wing for Cas, outside Michael Shenton..
As a very versatile player, he also turned out at centre and stand-off, playing at club level for Salford City Reds, Hull FC, St Helens, Huddersfield, Castleford and Canberra Raiders in Australia. And in 2017, he was named in a World All Stars X111.
He played football as a boy and it was his Jamaican grandad who got him playing Rugby League at Waterhead where he made such an impression that, at the age of 14, he was taken to Salford. While at Salford, he captained England under-18s. About the same time, he picked up a Young Player-of-the-Year award.
In total, and at club level, he had scored 133 tries by the time he reached 375 games — and he is still going strong. “I still have a lot left in me,” says the man who was born in the Royal Oldham Hospital, found fame and fortune elsewhere and is now returning “home” to the place where it all began.
His Mum was born in Australia, but it’s here, on the playing fields of Oldham, where he learned his trade at Waterhead and where his grandad, unwittingly, played such an important role in his grandson’s story.
Both Turner and Joe Wardle will assist with the coaching at Oldham but both will regard playing as their priority. Like Turner, 32-year-old Wardle (centre or second-row) will certainly know his way around, having scored nearly 90 tries in 237 senior games at the highest level for clubs like Bradford Bulls, Huddersfield Giants, where he became a household name in three separate stints, Castleford Tigers and Leigh Centurions, to say nothing of his six games for Scotland.
Said Joe:
“When I sat down and spoke to Mike Ford, it reminded me so much of when I signed for Leigh. Mike’s enthusiasm for taking the club forward was infectious.”
We are going places. Watch this space !
