HEAD coach Stuart Littler was upbeat after Oldham suffered a 42-20 defeat to Widnes Vikings at the Vestacare Stadium on Sunday.
After Widnes struggled to handle Roughyeds in the first half, they finally showed their championship play-off credentials when they scored three unanswered tries in a 20 minute period which was enough to earn them victory.
There were eleven new signings on show in the defeat and Stu was happy with how they fared against a strong side.
Said Stu:
“Overall, I’m reasonably happy; today was all about trying to give people game time, building togetherness and moving forwards.
“There were things on show today that we’ve been working on in training. I wanted some systems and processes being applied into a game scenario and that’s what we got.
“We had a lot of new boys out there and our completion rate was really high, especially in the first half.”
For large parts of the game, Roughyeds went toe-to-toe with Widnes and, at half-time, were leading after two tries from Patrick Ah Van and one from Joe Hartley.
Despite their errors, Widnes caused the Oldham defence lots of problems but Stu was impressed with how Roughyeds handled it.
Added Stu:
“We knew there was a challenge coming; our goal-line defence in the first half was spot on.
“It was quality in parts, in the second half, but we let ourselves down with a couple of last play tries.
“We’re never happy in defeat, but we’ve got loads of learning points on how to make ourselves better.
“Our battle is to be ready for week one and make sure we put our best foot forward in the next few weeks of pre-season.”
