Mike Ford to go into our Hall of Fame

MIKE Ford, our managing director and a leading figure in the club's ambitious redevelopment, will be one of three of our former players who will be admitted soon to the Oldham club's Hall of Fame, which will then number 22.

The three latest incumbents will be John Hough, Phil Larder and Mike Ford, who was once a pupil of Larder's at Saddleworth School where Larder, an Oldham centre, was head of physical education and thus head of games when Ford was a pupil at the school and looked up to 'sir' as one of his rugby mentors.

Now 58, Ford has been and still is one of the club's most influential people, having served it as scrum-half, team captain, player-coach, head coach and now a man with special responsibilities, as full-time managing director, for steering the club back to the big time.

He works closely with chairman Bill Quinn and head coach Sean Long and is not only one of the go-ahead club's "big three", but is the ONLY full-time director and is clearly a man, like Long, who has seen it all in rugby, done it all, worked in both codes, and shares with Long the distinction of providing our rugby know-how while prominent businessman Bill Quinn, the chairman, adds another dimension as the street-wise self-made man who has perhaps seen it all in a different way and has made a few quid in the bargain.

It is no secret that while Ford and Long are the rugby brains of this operation, the club's financial status and business acumen belong to Bill, the boss.

Ford has found his perfect niche, working for his beloved hometown club with the authority to make key decisions and to guide the club in the direction he thinks is best.

He also has the undoubted advantage of being a people's person, a guy like Quinn and Long, who can make every individual feel important and a man who never forgets his roots or the basic principals that the customer must be cherished and that he and the current management are merely "custodians of the key" and won't be around for ever.

Ford and Larder, a man who received the MBE for his services to Rugby Union, will be inducted together into the club's Hall of Fame when Rochdale Hornets come to Boundary Park on Sunday, January 12 (3pm) for the Law Cup. It will be one of several additional attractions on the big day, not least the anticipated first appearance of the 'new' Oldham and the likely debut of big-name signings like Gil Dudson, Adam Milner, Matty Ashurst, Iain Thornley and Josh Drinkwater.

As I've said previously in this Round-Up series, this town and club can be mighty proud of the men with the "made in Oldham" trademark who have done something special in rugby league, going all the way back to Joseph Platt, the sport's first secretary.

Phil Larder MBE is one of those Oldhamers, with a passion for both codes and as a former employee of the RFL, as director of coaching at one time and once an author of a Skills Manual (1983) and a Coaching Manual (1988).

He played for Oldham for more than ten years, making 328 appearances, scoring 111 tries and 475 goals, scoring most tries in a season three times and most goals four times,

He coached Widnes, Keighley and Sheffield at club level and England RL in the 1995 World Cup. Under Larder's stewardship, England beat Australia in an early round, but lost to the powerful green-and-golds in the final.

On switching to Rugby Union, he was England's defence coach and Clive Woodward's right-hand man for several years and it was that role that earned him the MBE after England beat Australia in Sydney in the RU World Cup Final.

Larder told me later, over a coffee on the Elk Mill site: "It was an unforgettable moment when the winning drop goal went over, made all the more special for me personally because we had beaten Australia."

So what of Ford, who learned the rudiments of the game on Churchill Playing Fields as a teenager with Larder as his teacher ? Well, his first pro club was Wigan but his tale of how he urged Oldham to sign him up first has been well documented. He came to Oldham from Leigh for a reported £65,000 in season 1987-88 and made his debut v Whitehaven at Watersheddings in January, 1988.

In the best part of four years here, he captained the side, made appearances in numerous big games and eventually moved to Castleford for a fee of around £72.500 where he struck up a family friendship with head coach Darryl Van de Velde. Ford once said famously that, having been a player with Wigan, Leigh and Oldham when he moved to Castleford, he thought he knew all about the game but his Aussie boss taught him all sorts of things, particularly how to take a game by the scruff of the neck and how to organise a side and take it round the field.

In a glittering playing and coaching career – and this will be useful to those Oldham fans who perhaps don't remember those days long ago – Ford was at Oldham in his first spell when Roughyeds were a yo-yo team, alternating between Division Two when he arrived in January, 1988, to Division One in 1988-89, back to Division Two in 1989-90 and back to the First Division in 90-91.

In that four-season period, however, he played a key role as captain and scrum-half in some of the club's most magical games ever . . . two Second Division Premiership Finals at Old Trafford against Featherstone and Hull KR, both wins; a Lancashire Cup Final against Warrington at St Helens; two Challenge Cup semi-finals against Warrington at Central Park and against Wigan at Burnden Park, Bolton; and that breath-taking third-round Challenge Cup win at Naughton Park, in my view the best of the lot, when we smashed star-spangled Widnes 16-4 in 1990 just a few months after the Chemics, as they were called back then, beat Canberra Raiders, and a certain Chris O'Sullivan, in the final of the World Club Challenge at the Theatre of Dreams.

I watched Ford master-mind all those games and I was still around when Chris Hamilton pulled off one of his many master-strokes – remember John Harbin, Gary Mercer, Brian McDermott etc – to bring him back to Oldham ten years later after the local lad's two successful spells at Castleford, where he is already in the Tigers' Hall of Fame, as well as shorter stays at South Queensland Crushers in Australia, Warrington, Wakefield and Bramley, where he had already started his coaching career, while still playing.

He took over on a two-year contract as player-coach, inheriting a side that finished next to bottom in the Northern Ford Premiership the year before.

In his first season, 2000, he took Oldham to sixth in the division behind Dewsbury Rams, Keighley Cougars, Doncaster Dragons, Leigh Centurions and Featherstone Rovers and above the likes of Hull KR and Widnes Vikings. Oldham were thrilled and Ford signed a new deal to November, 2004.

In season 2001 there were three ever-presents, Phil Farrell, Pat Rich and Neil Roden and big prop Jason Clegg was one game behind them.

Goalkicker Rich narrowly missed out on a remarkable record of playing and scoring in every game. A blank sheet at Hull KR on the last day of the regular season put paid to his chances although he still finished with 146 goals and seven tries which was more than York managed as a team.

Top try scorer with 18 was full-back Mark Sibson, while Ford himself played 20 times, coming off the bench 12 times. Roden and Keith Brennan also played half-back.

Oldham, who thrilled fans with seven wins in 21 days near the end of the season, finished fourth behind Leigh, Widnes and Rochdale with 21 wins from 28 games, but it was in the play-off that Ford proved his brilliance off the bench, helping his side to win narrowly at Leigh and then taking the semi-final against Rochdale by storm, almost single-handedly turning the game on its head after Hornets had looked certain winners.

Sadly, Oldham could not produce an encore in the final, Widnes winning through to Super League after Ford had taken his troops to within one game of the elite competition.

He had done a fantastic job for his home-town club, so much so that Ireland RU made an approach and after much deliberation, Ford left us to pursue his rugby career in the Union code. Not surprisingly, the lad from Grasscroft did well in that code, too, and the rest, as they say, is history.

In the Union game, he has worked for top clubs at domestic level and for Ireland, England and the British and Irish Lions at international level, while in League he has plied his trade for several clubs and has captained his country and toured Down Under with Great Britain in 1988.

Each of his three sons are involved in Union, George playing for Sale Sharks and England, Joe coaching Doncaster RU after a playing career which took in Leeds Carnegie and Jacob with two senior posts down in Suffolk, one at club level and the other at a leading public school after himself going to Harrow,

John Hugh, meanwhile, will be inducted into our hall of fame in a ceremony at the Fox and Pine, Greaves Street, Oldham on Sunday, December 22 at 2.30pm. His induction can't be done at the same time as Ford and Larder because he lives in Australia now and he won't be here on January 12.

Hooker Hough, who played for Oldham RU and Waterhead Warriors before being snapped up by Warrington, was the first player to sign for the re-formed Oldham club in 1997 after Oldham Bears RLFS plc went into voluntary liquidation and thus out of existence in 1997.

Hough, who signed his Oldham forms in Chris Hamilton's car, played 228 games for the club, scoring 55 tries. Like Larder and Ford, he is Oldham born and bred.