Brusied Oldham want Haven hope

Correspondent

Oldham were hammered 54-12 by London Broncos last weekend, and coach Scott Naylor is expecting another tough test against Whitehaven this weekend.

“London is the last place you want to go to four days after you have played Bradford Bulls,” he said.

“We started OK and finished Ok but London were just too strong, too quick and too powerful for us. It was a tough game but that’s this division and the lads will be better again for going and playing there.

“We’ve had an extremely tough month. Whitehaven will be a tough game but they are around us in the table and not near the top. We were battered and bruised for a while but we should be OK.

“We’re looking forward to the game and we’ve got lads coming back from injury, so we should be pretty strong as far as the squad goes.”

Whitehaven were beaten 30-18 by Featherstone Rovers last week.

Coach James Coyle felt that the game was a tight contest, and gave his players something to build on.

“It was quite tight for long periods, if we’d had the bounce of the ball we could have got something out of it,” he said.

“At 14-12 we had a try disallowed, which I thought was a fair try and that would have made a big difference with how the game went in the last 10/15 minutes.

“This weekend is a massive game for both teams, there will be a lot of pressure. We have to make sure we handle that in the right way.

“We’ve performed well for the last few weeks but unfortunately not come away with anything – for all that effort we haven’t got much out of it.”

Second row Ugo Perez, loose forward John Paul Brocklebank and scrum-half Louis Jouffret could all miss out for Haven.