Naylor wants Oldham to learn lessons at Keighley

Oldham coach Scott Naylor believes that his team will learn some valuable lessons when they travel to face Keighley in a preseason friendly this Sunday.

Keighley beat Oldham in League 1 at Cougar Park in 2015, and Naylor feels that will add to a useful challenge ahead of the new campaign.

“We’ll learn more about ourselves in 80 minutes at Cougar Park than we have done in seven weeks of pre-season training,” he said.

“That ground has bad memories for us.

As such, it will give us a big mental challenge before the season even gets started. We were poor at Cougar Park and we need to go back and do a lot better.

“Keighley were very unlucky not to get promoted with us. They were battling with us all year for first or second place and since then they have strengthened considerably and will be one of the main promotion challengers again in the season coming up.

“They are a tough, talented outfit and it will be a tough test for us on their patch.

“In a game like this, performance is more important than the result but, having said that, it’s always nice to win a game of rugby.

“Because there’s nothing at stake, pre-season games can sometimes be a bit boring, but from the players’ perspective it will just be nice to get on the field again in a competitive game.”