Challenge Cup third round preview: Oldham v Coventry Bears

Oldham and the Coventry Bears face each other for the second successive week with Oldham winning their iPro Cup encounter 42-6.

Oldham coach Scott Naylor said: “The conditions played a massive part, it was very windy with rain and sleet and the pitch didn’t hold up very well. Considering the conditions I was happy with the way we played.

“The approach will be exactly the same this week. To be honest it’s probably more difficult playing the same team when you’ve won by just short of 40 points.

“There’s a tendency for your lads to drop off a little bit in intensity and it’s my job to make sure that doesn’t happen.

“The conditions will obviously be different and could change the game but we’ll approach it like it’s a brand new game. We have spoken about it several times this week to make sure there’s no complacency and give a 100 per cent performance.”

Coventry coach Tom Tsang said his team will have learned valuable lessons from the first encounter.

“Fourteen of the 17 who were involved in the game were playing at that level for the first time,” he said.

“It was a little bit of a mismatch in terms of experience and there’s lots of lessons to be learned in terms of the speed and the intensity of the game.

“It was a great learning experience for our guys. Obviously you go into every game wanting to win but realistically a win for us, in terms of our development, is an improvement on last week in terms of score line and performance.

“We’ll be going up there with a better insight into what we need to do at this level.”