Pat on the back for Ford and Chamberlain

THE junior section of the Oldham Amateur League gave big wraps to Mike Ford, Chris Chamberlain and all at the highly-applauded Netpar Training Centre, which used to be known as Melrose Playing Fields, when it was announced that no fewer than five junior finals will take place at Netpar following an enforced rethink.

It was planned to play the finals as Boundary Park curtain-raisers, but when this had to be scrapped by the junior clubs through no fault of neither their own nor that of Oldham Rugby, Netpar on mid-week evenings was offered as an alternative and the juniors snapped their hands off,

"We were looking for somewhere 'different' for our finals," said John Byram, who is the go-between twixt the juniors and Oldham RL Club.

We would have been privileged and honoured to play curtain-raisers to Oldham games, but when that was impossible it became increasingly difficult to sort things out and I can't speak too highly of the Netpar people, particularly Mike Ford and Chris Chamberlain, the Foundation guy, for coming to our rescue.

They were particularly helpful and I would like to thank them publicly for coming to our rescue.

I'm sure the lads will enjoy playing at Netpar where Bill Quinn and Co have spent astonishing sums of money in transforming Melrose into a large, multi-purpose sports facility, of which everyone concerned can be so proud. Might I suggest that anyone who has not been to Netpar recently pops along to one or more of our five finals, all of which will be staged separately on different Tuesday and Thursday evenings over the course of the next two weeks.

Each game will be sponsored, as will the man of the match. Under-16s go FREE and its only £2.50 for everyone else. All five finals, under-12s to under-16s inclusive, will kick-off at 6.30pm..

The full list of finals, in chronological order, is as follows:

GAME ONE: Under-12s, St Anne's v Saddleworth, Thursday, Sep11 (6.30).

GAME TWO: Under-15s, Saddleworth v Mayfield, Tuesday, Sep 16 (6.30).

GAME THREE: Under-14s, St Anne's v Saddleworth, Thursday, Sep 18 (6.30).

GAME FOUR: Under-13s, Mayfield v Saddleworth, Tuesday, Sep 23 (6.30).

GAME FIVE: Under-16s, Waterhead v St Anne's, Thursday, Sep 25 (6.30).

Interestingly, Waterhead are the highest-ranked local community club in the NCL at senior level, but they have only one side in the local junior finals compared with Saddleworth's four and the three posted by St Anne's'