Top brass to join Yeds walk in tribute to Rob Burrow

BILL Quinn (chairman), Mike Ford (managing director), and Jim Minton (financial director) will represent Oldham RLFC when they take part in the YEDS’ sponsored walk from Boundary Park to the Crown Oil Arena at Rochdale on Sunday, July 28 when Oldham play there.

All money raised by the YEDS, the club’s enterprising and go-ahead Supporters’ Group, will be for the late Rob Burrow’s continued fight against Motor Neurone Disease.

Bill, Mike and Jim, the Roughyeds’ top brass, will take it in turn to push Bill Minton in his wheelchair. Aged 93, Bill is Jim’s dad and a lifelong Oldham fan, who has been supporting the club for more than 80 years, writes ROGER HALSTEAD.

There will be a bucket collection en route and the YEDS hope as many people as possible will join the walk, rugby league fans or not, YEDS members or not.

The walk is aimed specifically at Oldham fans who will be going to the Rochdale game, but YEDS stress that no one will be turned away.

Entry fee is £5, but the bulk of the money for the fight against MND, in memory of Rob, will be raised by sponsorship.

Details can be found on the YEDS website.

They’re also given on the YEDS’ Facebook page and the event page they have created.

The Rob Burrow tributes dominated yesterday’s Challenge Cup Finals at Wembley — a massive day for the sport which meant that Oldham, like all other clubs in tiers one to three , had a blank weekend.

The next match for Oldham is at Gateshead against Newcastle Thunder on June 16 (2pm kick-off) — a must-win game following the defeat at Keighley and despite last week’s last-gasp drop-goal winner by Danny Craven against North Wales Crusaders in Colwyn Bay.

It crowned a magnificent fightback in which Sean Long’s heroes dug deep into their reservoir of desire, determination, self-belief, fitness, team spirit and positive attitude, but for an hour they fell well below the standard required and that will be uppermost in the mind of coach and management ahead of the long trip to the Tyne.

As Wigan boss Matt Peet said after his Wembley triumph:

“I’m so proud of a bunch of lads who refuse to lose.”!

Until Keighley we had refused to lose too — well, at least in the league — and the fightback in North Wales, allied to the way we dominated much of the second half at Cougar Park, augurs well for the second half of the season.

I still believe we would have won had either of those much-discussed efforts by Lawton and Craven resulted in tries.

That isn’t to say they were — but it does indicate that so much depends on fine margins and/or refereeing decisions.

They went against us at Keighley; they went for us in North Wales, when it was their fans who felt they had cause to get at the man in the middle for presenting us with so many second-half penalties.

Anyway, we lost at Keighley; won at Colwyn — just. We are now second in the table to Keighley, two points behind them, but with a game in hand and a better points differential, not to mention that seven of our remaining 11 games will be at Boundary Park.

It’s going to be a neck-and-neck finish — and we can’t afford to lose again.