Oulton Raiders (Home)
It’s “Double Header Saturday” again this weekend at Twist Lane as the first and second team are both in action. The second team kick the day off at 1pm when they play local rivals Golborne Parkside in the semi final of the NWML Trophy. That is followed at 3pm by the first team who take on Oulton Raiders in Round 13 of the NCL Kingstone Press Cider Premier Division.
Miners go into the game on the back of an excellent performance last weekend in the Conference Challenge Trophy, winning 48-16 in front of a large crowd against Wigan St Pats. The win moving Miners into the last four and setting up a home semi final against Thornhill Trojans in early August.
It’s another important game for Miners as they look to build on last week’s win with more fast attacking rugby, backed up with a strong defensive effort to get their league campaign back on track after dropping out of the top six a couple of weeks ago. Victory will move Miners back into the playoffs and that’s where they want to stay challenging at the top end with the season now past the half way mark.
Coaches Allan Coleman & Paul Whitworth are forced into making a number of changes from last week with Shaun Dowie, Ellis Grimes, Mark Nicholson and Connor Partington (all away on holiday), Tom Farrimond (works doo) and Connor Ratcliffe (injured) all missing. Coming into the side are Martin Gray, Andrew Groves, Joe Harrison, Dave Rowlands, Adam Thomason and u18s player Adam Ashurst.
Looking back at last week’s Conference Challenge Trophy victory, coach Paul Whitworth said “It was our most complete performance of the season so far, we knew it had to be to beat the current league leaders.”
“After the disappointment the previous week, in training we had focused on just two areas of improvement and the players responded really well.”
“Pats are one of the best at controlling the ruck and we worked really hard in making things as difficult as possible in that area and this took too much energy from them.”
“Defensively we made big improvements in the middle especially on the inside effort.”
“It now sets us up with a really interesting Semi-Final against Thornhill who took Mayfield to the cleaners.”
On this week’s visit of Oulton Raiders to Twist Lane, Paul added “We had to really battle hard when we met them earlier in the season and I anticipate another tough game.”
“They are going to be refreshed after their rest and its important that we continue to build momentum, secure the two points and move back up the table.”
” We now enter the holiday season and we lose no less than six players from last weeks line up. But we can’t dwell on that, the quality of the players coming back into the side won’t afford us any excuses.”
“The forecast looks good so we will look forward to another good crowd with the Reserves playing before us.”
Oulton Raiders travel to Twist Lane all freshened up after having been without a game for over two weeks, their last game being at home on the 20th June against Lock Lane, winning 30-26 to move them off the foot of the table into tenth. The Raiders have seven of their remaining ten games after Saturday’s clash with Miners at home so they will be looking to hit a run of form over the coming weeks to get themselves out of the relegation zone.
When the two teams met at Raider Park back in Round 3, a Brad Hargreaves hat- trick helped Miners to a 24-10 victory, their first and only away win of the league season so far.
Leigh Miners 2nd team are unbeaten in the league going into this semi final against Golborne Parkside and with winning the NWML Trophy last year, they are determined to put in a strong performance on Saturday to keep up their chances of winning it back to back. When the two teams met earlier in the season in the league at Golborne, the game ended in a 28-28 draw.
The u18s have a free weekend.
Leigh Miners Ladies are away at Selby Warriors on Sunday in the league.
Related Posts
« Inside This Weekend’s Programme Leigh Miners Rangers 40 Oulton Raiders 22 »
