Big Day at BP for the Women’s game

All roads lead to Boundary Park tomorrow (Sat, October 19) when a top women's game will be played ,Lancashire v Yorkshire, kicking off at 2pm.

Admission is FREE, gates will open at 1pm, and parking will be available outside the Joe Royle stand.

Some of the best players in this country will be on view in this Roses match, after which England boss Stuart Barrow will name his team to play Wales at Headingley in two weeks.

In the final public run-out before that Headingley clash with the Welsh, England coach Stuart Barrow will mix some of his top and most experienced internationals with promising young girls who are on the verge of England selection..

He said: "The women's game is on an upward spiral. This will be a big event in Oldham, no doubt about that."

Before the Roses match, important to Oldham because they are currently in the process of putting a team together to represent club and town, there may be a local girls' curtain-raiser and there will certainly be the first-ever female coaching conference.

The Roses girls have been training for this one over the last few days as preparations for the forthcoming internationals gather momentum.

The best wishes and congratulations of everyone at Oldham RLFC go out to Wayne Hubbard, who has succeeded the long-serving Phil Bradbury as secretary of the Oldham Amateur League,

Phil has retired after many years of stewardship of the league's affairs.

He was a great authority on the history of amateur clubs in Oldham, but he has now handed over the baton to 53-year-old Wayne, a much younger man, but a man who will soon discover that PB is a hard act to follow.

I don't pretend to know much about Wayne at this juncture, but he is Oldham born and bred and has previous experience of admin work by "helping out" (his words) at North-West Counties juniors.

"I enjoy that type of work," he said, "and if I can do a job in the sport I love in my home town, that will suit me fine."

Congrats, too, to a couple of local lads who figured in last Saturday's 2024 NCL awards at a prestigious lunch at the home of Lancashire County Cricket Club at the "other" Old Trafford/.

Having won promotion from NCL division one, Waterhead Warriors will play in the Premiership next year, but they left div one with a flourish, Keith Brennan taking that division's coach-of-the-year crown and full-back Jenson Hamilton lifting the divisional POY prize.

Well done, too, to another former Oldham player, Rob Roberts, who won a coach-of-the-year prize in div three with East Leeds