OLDHAM RLFC 66 MIDLANDS HURRICANES 0

AFTER four losses on the spin, Oldham finally got it right.

You can’t do much more in a performance that tempts the observer to acclaim: “The season starts here”, than to score 12 tries at one end and keep your own line completely intact at the other.

Before it all began at the Vestacare Stadium on Sunday, Hurricanes were a place above Roughyeds in the Betfred League One table.

By the time it was all over, Oldham had leapfrogged them into seventh spot and, at this half-way point in the league season, were only one place and four points outside the play-offs.

It was seventh heaven.

“The London Skolars game apart, this has been coming for a week or two,” commented Roughyeds chief Chris Hamilton.

Head coach Stu Littler added: “We need to be more consistent, but hopefully we can build on this now and do enough to make the play-offs.”

Picking an Oldham man of the match must have been a nightmare, given the number of genuine contenders.

It went to Luke Nelmes, but it could easily have gone to Joe Hartley, Martyn Ridyard,

Robbie Butterworth or Jordan Andrade, such was Oldham’s dominance from start to finish.

It took them only nine minutes to open the scoring with a Butterworth try, goaled by Ridyard for a six-point lead, and they never looked back.

Confidence and self-belief could easily have waned in that spell of four consecutive losses, but as the points piled up against the Midlanders you could almost smell the confidence returning.

Half-back Butterworth, left-wing Hartley and prop Andrade each scored two tries while Dane Windrow, James Thornton and Nyle Flynn, in the forwards, and Owen Restall, Calvin Wellington and Connor Carr, in the backs, also crossed the Hurricanes line.

Ridyard kicked nine conversions out of 12 attempts to stay among the top five marksmen in the division, just as full-back Restall remains among the leading try scorers.

Team: Restall; Cooke, Wellington, Carr, Hartley; Ridyard, Butterworth; Nelmes, Jinks, Spencer, Windrow, Thornton, Whittel. Subs: O’Donnell, Andrade, Cameron, Flynn.

Ref, Brad Milligan; Att: 673; HT: 26-0; Pens, 4-2.