Mike Ford
Welcome to the Vestacare Stadium!
Welcome to the Vestacare Stadium for our first home game since the six new directors, including myself, took over the running of the club.
This is not only a new chapter in the long and rich history of our great club, but what we like to call A NEW BEGINNING.
That was the message we put out when we met our many club volunteers and other groups closely associated to the club the other day.
Such has been the volume of work since we bought the club off Chris Hamilton that the original press conference to announce the change seems ages ago. Life is like a whirlwind right now and that goes for the six of us.
Our vision for the future, and thus our aim, is to provide this great town of ours with a rugby league team of which everyone is proud to support and even prouder to represent on the field, to work for behind the scenes or to cheer on from the stands or terraces.
I know I’ve been in rugby union for a long time, but my roots will always be special to me and my roots, as you know, are in rugby league, in Oldham, and in Oldham RLFC which I supported as a boy, played for and coached and is a club which has always been close to my heart.
I recall playing for Oldham under-11s at Wembley and it’s something I have never forgotten and never will.
It’s brilliant to be back in town after many years away, but it has changed. Back in the day, Athletic enjoyed their days in the sun under Joe Royle and his “pinch me” seasons and Watersheddings,on the other side of town, was home to thousands of local people but, more specifically, to a team that reached numerous Challenge Cup semi-finals in a span of not many years.
They were magical days. Oldham Rugby was on everyone’s lips; the fans queued outside the Oldham Chronicle office on Union Street every Saturday tea time to get the ‘Green Final’ straight off the presses; and the town was buzzing about Oldham sport and, more specifically for us rugby nuts, about the Roughyeds.
My vision for the club, all these years later, is to rekindle the love of the game and the club in these parts and to see a return to the great days when every Oldham kid wanted to play for Oldham and was never prouder than walking down the street in a Roughyeds top.
Of course, we want to get to Wembley eventually. Of course, we want to get in to Super League.
But the thing that motivates me most of all is the vision of Oldham lads playing for Oldham and being proud to play for Oldham, like it was when I was a kid.
But it isn’t about Mick Harrington, Gary Kershaw, Jim Minton, Simon Winnard or Haydn Walker — and it certainly isn’t about me.
Our success or failure will all hinge on YOU and the level of your support. Please remember this is YOUR club, not ours. We will make the decisions, provide the leadership and steer the ship, but we are custodians only. The club is YOURS and that’s how we see it.
Finally, it would be remiss of me not to pay tribute to the outgoing custodian Chris Hamilton.
He has kept this club alive and kicking for quarter of a century. To do that in any circumstances would be a major achievement, but to do it for the most part on his own and faced with extraordinary problems on a day-to-day basis is absolutely amazing.
We must all say “thanks” to Chris and recognise what he has done for the club and the town.
It’s now up to us to take the club forward — and you can rest assured the six of us to a man will do all we can to make it happen.
