WHILE acknowledging his guilt and accepting that he must work on his discipline, Oldham Rugby League Club has extended the arm of sympathy to their young forward Callum Cameron and has re-signed him for 2023 despite the fact that he faces an eight-match ban from the start of next season.
Although he’s not 22 until the end of this month, the local boy who was formerly at Waterhead, then Huddersfield Giants, then back at Waterhead before first signing for his home-town club, played in 14 of the Roughyeds’ 22 games in cup and league last season, mainly as a second-row forward.
It was in the last of those games, the play-off match at Rochdale, that he was involved in an incident near the end of the game and subsequently got an eight-match ban after the RFL disciplinary panel accepted his guilty plea and then considered his previous record.
Commenting on his signing of a new one-year deal, head coach Stu Littler said:
“He’s a young Oldhamer who has developed a lot during his first season with us. It will be a frustrating start to next year for him because of his long ban, but he is a very honest lad and he accepts that, as far as the incident at Rochdale was concerned, he didn’t get it right.
“He and we just have to cop the punishment on the chin and get on with it, while accepting that we need to work on his aggression and how he reacts to certain things that happen in a game.
“He is very proud to wear the Oldham shirt, as are his family, and that counts for a lot. He is also very committed and very determined to go as far as he can in the game while always doing his best for Roughyeds, whom he and his family have supported since he was a small boy.
“He does a lot of work on his own in the gym, over and above what he does with us in team training.
“On top of all that he’s of the right age and he has a lot of body growth in him and Shez and I are really looking forward to working with him again.”
Callum said:
“I absolutely loved playing for Oldham. I got plenty of game time in the second-row and over the course of the season I picked up a lot of experience. I had no hesitation in signing a one-year extension. My dad goes to all the games, home and away, and my mum gets to as many as she can although she often has to work on Sundays.
“We have always supported Oldham — the whole family.
“We live in Waterhead, close to the Waterhead club, and it means a lot to all of us to be supporting local rugby league.”
He added:
“I think we’ll go better next year. It was a very new squad this year and we’ll definitely benefit from having had a year together.”
