SCOTT Naylor has warned that before ‘Awesome August’, with its two crucial home games against Newcastle and Doncaster, his Oldham RL promotion pushers face an equally demanding contest in London this Saturday.
They travel to the New River Stadium (3pm kick-off) to play a London Skolars side that needs two points to climb back into the play-off five.
Oldham will be guaranteed a second-place position at the very least if they win each of their remaining five games.
That’s a tall order, but it’s the target nevertheless and for now Naylor is more concerned with what happens in North London on Saturday than with what’s to come later.
He doesn’t throw in the old “one game at a time” cliche, but in reality that’s how he view things when he’s chasing five wins from as many games.
He was a happy man at training on Tuesday night when everybody trained flat out apart from long-term injury victim Aaron Jones-Bishop.
Kyran Johnson, Ben Davies and Anthony Bowman, all of whom have been sidelined by injury recently, looked fine and ready to go.
“So long as nobody reports adverse reaction on Thursday night I’ll have practically a full squad available,”
said the Roughyeds boss.
He was at pains to point out, however, that this ‘first of the five’ will be just as challenging as Newcastle and Doncaster at home and Hunslet away.
He said:
“I know they’ve slipped from top to seventh in recent weeks, but they’ve had some tough games and they hit a poor run of form.
“Fundamentally, though, they are capable of regaining top form at the click of a switch. They’re big, strong, fit and athletic and their coach, Jermaine Coleman, likes to play good rugby, so they tend to throw the ball about.
“In beating them at home we played really well and to make it a double we’ll again have to be on our best form.”
