Park Lane Sedgley Park

Sedgley Park was the venue for Oldham Reserves v Hornets Reserves in what turned out to be another highly competitive fixture. Hornets fielded a number of Players who will be hoping to feature in forthcoming First Team fixtures whilst Oldham fielded Lucas Onyango who was returning from a shoulder operation.

Defence dominated the opening quarter with both sides putting in some bone crunching hits, Hornets will be disappointed at the amount of times they let Oldham off the hook by conceding soft penalties.

But it was Hornets who drew first blood after 16 minutes when Craig Highton latched on to a superb Sam Butterworth kick to touch down in the corner, Hough missed the conversion. The lead could have been extended further but Benji Lloyd carelessly dropped the ball over the line whilst in the act of scoring.

Again another pin point kick this time from Chris Hough allowed Mark Roughneen to get Hornets second try of the evening, Hough again missed the conversion. Hornets continued to dominate on the run up to half time and the unlucky Eric Johnson could have extended Hornets lead but unfortunately slipped whilst side stepping the full back. This made the interval score 0 – 8.

Hornets didn’t seem to learn from the first half and continued to rack up the penalties giving Oldham all the territorial advantage in the early stages of the second half and it was Martin Sarsfield who took advantage of some tired defence to score Oldham solitary try of the evening which was converted by Eathan Langhorn to put Oldham right back in the game at 6 – 8.

At this point Shaun Gartland reverted to his near starting line up and this seemed to steady Hornets down. Again a great kick from stand off Butterworth lead to Hornets gaining some great field position which lead to big prop Tom Wild crashing over under the posts. Mark Roughneen converted to give Hornets some breathing space at 6 – 14.

The young and very enthusiastic Oldham side refused to give up on the game and it wasn’t until Jamie Knight scored in the corner in the 72nd minute that Hornets could breathe a little easier. Roughneen missed the conversion which made the final score 6 – 18.

The win makes it two from two for Hornets which will please Gartland however, he will have noted the massive penalty count given against Hornets on the night and also some poor handling which lead to Hornets bombing at least three further tries.

Butterworth and Hough were excellent in the Hornets mid field with some excellent work on both attack and defence but both of them were pushed all the way for the man of the match award by Wild, O’Brien and Johnson with Hough just getting the nod.

The next Reserve Team fixture is the home game v Oldham at Castleton Sports Centre on Thursday 24th April kick off 7.30.

Teams;

Oldham; 1. Anthony Bingham, 2. Dwaine Nelson, 3. Ashley Wildman, 4. Steven Fisher, 5. Lucas Onyango, 6. Eathan Langhorn (g), 7. Dale Lowe, 8. Alex Eyres, 9. Scott Mansfield, 10. William Schofield, 11. Martin Sarsfield (t), 12. Philip Jagger, 13. Mark Smith, 14. Patrick Toft, 15. David Orwell, 16. Gareth Schofield, 17. Dale Evans

Hornets; 1. Mark Brocklehurst; 2. Benji Lloyd, 3. Craig Highton (t), 4. Jamie Knight (t), 5. Mark Roughneen (t) (g), 6. Sam Butterworth, 7. Chris Hough, 8. Tom Wild (t), 9. Todd O’Brien, 10. John Sweeney, 11. Matthew Moores, 12. Ben Dewhirst, 13. Chris Charlesworth, 14. Andy Gorey, 15. Wes Lawton, 16. Eric Johnson, 17. David Cookson