THE season didn’t end as we would have wished. Nevertheless, the club’s Awards Night at the White Hart this Friday, September 15, promises to be one of those ’not to be missed’ Oldham Rugby occasions when we’ll see lots of old faces, talk of people, places and games that were once household names and share memories that have stood the test of time and will live for ever in our hearts and in our memory banks.
What sets this Awards Dinner apart from so many others is the link with the past and, in particular, with that fabulous 1989-90 season which so many of us recall as though it were yesterday. Back then, those of us who were perhaps in our Salad Days are now starting to wonder where all the years have gone, but the memories are still clear and sharp and they will never go away, writes an 82-year-old ROGER HALSTEAD, who was a fresh-faced slip of a lad, aged 23, when he made his debut as the late, lamented Oldham Evening Chronicle’s rugby league reporter back in 1964.
I didn’t know back then, when the famous Bert Summerscales was still secretary, when Harry Goodwin was the top official and when we were still a members’ club, that some 25 years later I would be in regular contact with club personnel like chairman John Chadwick and coach Tony Barrow, who were key figures at Watersheddings in a year that will always be remembered in the annals of our great club.
Yes, on Friday night, we will remember 1990 and I think this should be just the first of many such Awards Nights when we pick out a particular year of fame and fortune, choose a special game in that year and invite members of the team that day to join us at the White Hart, to turn back the clock and to re-live that glorious day when they put on the famous red and white jersey and created local sporting history.
How about that Mike Ford? Can we do this every year Bill Quinn?
The main focus, of course, will be on this years awards winners – and that’s how it should be – but it will be something different and something special when we are asked to pay tribute to those members of the Oldham squad that beat Hull KR 30-29 at Old Trafford in the Second Division Premiership Final on May 13, 1990 after coming back from the dead at 29-6 down.
We will be remembering and celebrating that along with this year’s winners; our club’s change of ownership last March; the season just finished; our informal yet extremely valuable and highly-regarded links with Oldham Athletic and with Oldham Council; and our move back to Boundary Park which Frank Rothwell believes could and should become the sporting hub of the borough.
So what makes 89-90 so special ? John Chadwick, the chairman back then and here tonight as club vice-president, said at the time: “We did the Second Division proud.”
John Watkins, whom most of you will remember as the likeable, larger-than-life character who would run on the pitch with the ‘magic sponge’, is nothing if he isn’t madly enthusiastic about Roughyeds, about Manchester City (shades of the late Bernard Halford) and about Lancashire CCC. Recalls John, now treasurer of the Players’ Association:
“We played in 16 cup-ties that year — a truly magnificent achievement.”
On my count, John, it was 15, but I get the drift and it WAS truly remarkable.
In total, Oldham played 43 games and won 36 of them, proving invincible at Watersheddings; reaching the final of the Lancashire Cup; the third round of the Regal Trophy; the semi-final of the Challenge Cup and winning the Second Division Premiership Final at Old Trafford to win promotion back to the First Division.
They beat St Helens away and Wigan at home in the Lancashire Cup but, for me, their best and biggest win of the year was their 16-4 win at Widnes in the third round of the Challenge Cup when the Chemics were World Club Champions, having beaten Canberra Raiders at Old Trafford a few months earlier,
What the might of Canberra couldn’t do, little Oldham did.
At the end of that season they played Hull KR in a Premiership Final at Old Trafford, winning 30-29 with tries by Paul Lord, Mike Ford, John Henderson, Richard Irving, Andy Ruane and Tommy Martyn, a goal by Duncan Platt and two by Gary Hyde. They went 29-6 down early in the second-half but staged a remarkable fightback to snatch it with Martyn’s late try and then his famous cartwheel.
The team: Platt; Irving, Hyde, Henderson, Lord; Clark, Ford; Casey, Ruane, Fieldhouse, Round, McAlister, Russell; subs. Martyn, Newton.
The versatile Russell played in 41 of the 43 games, playing at stand-off, both centre spots, full-back, hooker and loose-forward. Remarkable.
We’ll remember that great season at the White Hart on Friday.
See you there!
Tickets for the event have now sold out
