Injury crisis grips Oldham

Oldham’s injury crisis gets worse as coach Tony Benson struggles to deal with at least eight absentees for Sunday’s Co-operative Championship One fixture with Swinton Lions.

Unlucky Roughyeds are missing Marcus St Hilaire (hamstring), Ben Heaton (tonsillitis), John Gillam (face), Martin Roden (hamstring), Matt Fogerty, Luke Sutton (dead leg), Dave Ellison (ankle) and Neil Roden (groin).

Tom Wood-Hulme faces a late fitness test after being involved in a car crash on Wednesday.

But Benson is refusing to lose focus on the task in hand. He said: “Swinton are the form team. They’ll be very difficult opponents, but we’ll put a team together and have a good go at them.”

The good news for Benson is that winger Lucas Onyango came through last week’s game against Workington without suffering any ill effects after his recent injury.

However, the Oldham coach has urged his side to be more clinical with their performances. Benson said: “Last week there was a lot of rugby naiveté on our behalf.

“We had a young team out there and we just gave up too much ball through penalties and forced penalties. You can’t win games like that.”

Swinton are set to be without prop Neil Holland due to a knee injury suffered against Workington two weeks ago.

But Lions coach Steve McCormack will be in confident mood as he looks to extend his side’s 100 per cent start to this season’s Co-operative Championship One competition.