The sleeping giant is stirring – Chaddy

John Chadwick says little publicly these days – he prefers to let others do the talking, particularly the players with their top-of-the-table performances on the pitch.

But Lytham St Anne’s-based John, originally a Shaw gawbie and proud of his roots up there, was quick to point out this week that the attendance for the Oldham v Midlands Hurricane game, 1,582, was not only the highest in League One last Sunday, but of the attendances that were given, was the best in the Championship too.

No crowd figure was given for Barrow v Bradford Bulls or for Dewsbury Rams v Wakefield Trinity, but of the other five games in the Champlinship none matched 1,582. Featherstone v Batley (1.544) and Halifax v York (1.543) were very close to it, but at the other end of the Championship scale there sere only 629 at Swinton Lions v Toulouse (played on the Saturday) and only 856 at Whitehaven v Widnes.

“Things are going swimmingly,” said John. “The Joe Royle Stand was full to capacity for the Keighley game, hence the decision to open part of the opposite stand for Keighley fans. We took a huge army to Rochdale, giving Hornets their best attendance for years, and now this. It isn’t easy these days to swell crowds, but I think it’s fair to say that our sleeping giant is starting to stir.”

Three points ahead of Keighley, each with four to play, Oldham are red-hot favourites to win the title even though they play Cougars away next Sunday on a ground where they lost their only league game in this memorable year. They expect to take an army of fans in support, many of them travelling in official YEDS coaches.

I can personally vouch for the fact that Joe Public is talking rugby league again in these environs and all the signs look good, writes ROGER HALSTEAD.

“It helps massively, of course, when the chairman comes up with a special offer of a half-price ticket for the final game of the season against Workington Town for anyone who buys tickets for the other two remaining home games against Newcastle tomorrow and Cornwall,” added Chaddy. “Three cheers for Bill, I say. Back in the day (it seems a lifetime away) I was club chairman myself and I know at first hand what it means to him every time we run out down the tunnel ready to start a game.”

Bill paid an impassioned verbal tribute to the late Haydn Walker in the Broadway Suite last Sunday, describing the club’s one-time assistant coach and, more recently, a full-time club director as “a fantastic guy and both a rugby league man and a Roughyeds man in equal measure.”

Hurry if you plan to take up Bill’s half-price offer for the Workington game. There isn’t time to hang about.