Stars of yesteryear, still going strong in their 30s and with the experience, expertise and nous to be valuable golden-oldies, will be key operators on both sides when Oldham Rugby League Club start their Betfred League One season against Keighley Cougars at the Vestacare Stadium on Sunday.

Captain and on-field general at Oldham will be stand-off Martyn Ridyard, aged 35 and a prolific scorer of points, who will be looking to kick the two goals he needs to reach a career 1,000.

‘Riddy’ has amassed more than 300 senior games, most of them in two spells with his home-town club Leigh Centurions.

New Oldham coach Stu Littler swooped for the veteran soon after his appointment last autumn and immediately named him club captain and announced him as “my voice on the field.”

As coincidence would have it, Ridyard’s first league game in Oldham colours could easily see him in direct opposition to Keighley’s very own version of himself.

Scott Murrell, aged 36, is another golden oldie and a player of exceptional organisational ability and individual skill. He is equally at home at stand-off or loose-forward and it isn’t known yet where coach Rhys Lovegrove will use him.

If he plays Murrell at stand-off, as well he might, the former Hull KR and Halifax star (150 Super League games on Humberside) will be directly opposite Oldham’s Ridyard and that clash of the game’s senior citizens will not only be pivotal to the game’s outcome, but will alone be worth the fans’ admission money.

If Murrell starts at loose-forward it will be a massive clue as to how Cougars plan to avenge their 34-26 defeat by Oldham at Cougar Park three weeks ago.

The trend these days is for the loose-forward to be an extra prop or ‘middle’, but one thing Murrell certainly is not is a ‘middle’. He’s an out and out ball player with the vision and the ability to put colleagues into gaps -- a typical schemer of the old school and one who, wherever he plays, will be out to spread the ball around in an open style of play.

He isn’t alone either in a Keighley side that relies a lot on its ageing stars -- and none has seen it all more than centre or second-row Jake Webster. At the age of 38, Webster has a CV that’s as long as your arm, having played on both sides of the world, including eight Tests for New Zealand.

Chuck in Brenden Santi, a comparative “youngster” of 28 and an Aussie of Italian descent, who once captained the crack Australian Schoolboys side, and you have a Cougars side that’s overflowing with old-headed wisdom and craft.

Oldham have plenty of insider knowledge, though, given that several members of Littler’s new squad have played for Keighley in the past, Jack Coventry, Jason Muranka, Jack Arnold and Ryan Wright as recently as last season.

Emmerson Whittel and Will Cooke also played there earlier in their careers.

Said prop-forward Coventry: “We want to make the Vestacare a fortress and with the players we’ve got I think we can achieve that.

“Murrell, Webster and Santi are their go-to players. but it will be up to us to shut them down.”