Oldham can’t do more to take the club as high as possible

THE Rugby League faces its biggest shake-up for years – and Oldham are doing all they possibly can to take the club as far as it can in this period of great uncertainty.

Bill Quinn's latest comment about aiming for Super League is particularly interesting, as is the signing of Ryan Brierley and Jack Ormondroyd from crisis club Salford and the hint that there will be more big-name players to come.

Can Oldham do more? Of course not. Players will always come and go at this time of year, usually in relation to contracts, money, who else is interested, their relationship with the coach and management, and what happens on training nights, as a result of which we have lost Danny Craven to Sheffield and Adam Lawton to Widnes.

You can't please ALL the people ALL the time. But Sean Long's record of taking Oldham to fourth place in the Championship with less than a handful of games left in the regular season is AMAZING, TRULY AMAZING. Doncaster or Featherstone, dependant on who wins when they meet on Sunday, could pip us to fourth place and if Doncaster beat Rovers this week-end, our final home against the Dons will become a must-win affair and one that will surely put bums on seats.

Either way, we go to Featherstone on the last day of the regular season so we need to be aware of their threat of pipping us to fourth place. Both Doncaster and Featherstone are currently four points behind us, each with a game in hand, so it's ours to lose and we must be fancied to join York, Toulouse and Bradford Bulls in the top four.

If we are not in the top four we'll almost certainly make the top six, but there are big advantages to finishing in the top four and that's what all the fuss is about.

Although Oldham have lost home and away in the league to both Toulouse and Bradford, they point out that a) they played well at Toulouse in unusually hot conditions b) they murdered top-of-the-table York at home and could and should have won at their place and c) anything can happen in play-off football.

The appointment to senior positions of highly-experienced men like David Bottomley (operations and commercial), Chris Chamberlain (CEO of the Foundation), Callum Irving (Pathway) and George Riley (media) puts the club on a truly PROFESSIONAL LEVEL in every sense of the word. With those four in situ, working hard for chairman Bill Quinn, the money man of the operation, Mike Ford, whose rugby brain is as sharp as it always was when he coached and played, and Sean Long as coach (need I say more), Oldham are just as ready as most clubs for elevation to Super League.

It's a massive step but is anyone better placed than Oldham, with facilities, senior staff, and ambition to die for; rugby men with the knowledge and expertise of Ford and Long; and a chairman with the resolve, the determination, the ambition and, most of all, the money of Bill Quinn?

We have all seen what's happened to Salford, but can anyone see it happening here? At the end of the day, it's all about money and Oldham have put theirs, or should we say Bill Quinn's, into building a club, rather than just a team.

I have not even mentioned all that's gone on and is still going on at Melrose, or should we say these days, the NTC (Netpar Training Centre) on which a small fortune has been spent to convert a large, but run-down rugby league facility into one of which the club, the district, the Oldham team, local lads AND lasses and the local authority can be both proud and bask in a sense of achievement.

In these days of great uncertainty and change there is no telling what the future holds for Oldham, but there is no doubt that the club can put forward a good reason for even more progress in the months ahead

WHETHER OLDHAM ARE READY FOR FULL-TIME SUPER LEAGIE IS OPEN TO CONJECTURE, BUT THE CLUB'S AMBITION AND INTENT, HIGHLIGHTED BY THE MARQUEE SIGNINGS OF RYAN BRIERLEY AND JACK ORMONDROYD, PUTS THE ISSUE BEYOND DOUBT.