The Importance of the Cru Game Can’t Be Over Estimated

13/07/2024

Match News

THE importance of our next three games, starting with the visit of North Wales Crusaders to Boundary Park this Sunday (July 14), can’t be over-estimated. Next Sunday (July 21) we are at home again to strife-torn Keighley Cougars, our biggest rivals in the race to finish top, and on the following Sunday (July 28) we go to the Crown Oil Arena in Rochdale to play our nearest and dearest.

Cougars, who have sacked head coach Matt Foster and placed Director of Rugby Jake Webster in interim charge, have further caused raised eyebrows by making a statement in which they revealed there had been “significant internal tension between Matt and Jake”.

It all came to a head following last Sunday’s draw with third-placed Rochdale Hornets at Cougar Park — a point Keighley believed they dropped rather than Rochdale won.

Either way, it was a result that delighted in-form Rochdale, stunned Keighley – and thrilled Oldham, who currently sit in second place between table-topping Cougars and Hornets in third place, writes ROGER HALSTEAD.

Can Keighley finish top? Of course they can!

Can Oldham do it and thus push Keighley into second place ? Of course they can — and probably will !

Can Rochdale Hornets continue to cause a stir and finish third ? Of course they can — and they can be counted on to give Oldham one helluva game at Rochdale in two weeks’ time!

All this is relevant because, after North Wales, Oldham play Keighley, struggling to come to terms with all the negative stuff that’s going on over there, and then the derby. The mind boggles!

It all starts with the visit to Boundary Park of Crusaders, who might be in need of every point to clinch play-off qualification, but whom Oldham have struggled against in their last two outings, both of which went down to a deciding drop goal in the last few minutes.

They knocked us out of the 2023 play-offs with that late one-pointer and a 13-12 triumph in September last year and in Colwyn Bay earlier this summer we looked well beaten until Danny Craven scored a stunning try to level the scores at 24-24. He couldn’t land what would have been a victorious conversion, but his drop goal almost on the hooter did the trick, spared our blushes, and sent a massive travelling support away to the pub in order to celebrate an unlikely victory.

We certainly owe them, not one but a few!

And we’ll get the chance to do it without Danny boy, with new signing Kieran Dixon in the squad, with Joe Wardle in again after injury, and with Jordan Turner, Mo Agoro,, PLT, Jack Johnson, Ben O’Keefe and Cian Tyrer and Dixon all available for the outside backs.

On selection alone, Sean will earn his keep this week, that’s for sure.

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