A sporting Easter Weekend at Boundary Park

Boundary Park will rock to the tune of Oldham sports fans over the Easter weekend, there to watch local sporting action on Good Friday, Easter Saturday and finally, Easter Sunday.

The new £1m super pitch will be asked to cope with a soccer match and three rugby league games over the 72-hour, three-day sporting bonanza, which will give us three rugby league derby games, two of them featuring Oldham teams against teams from Rochdale.

Despite last week’s setback, Latics are still gunning for a play-off berth while the men from Fylde are holding their own in the ‘National’, all the signs pointing to a competitive 90 minutes of live sporting action.

Easter Saturday and Easter Sunday are rugby league days at Boundary Park:

The Standard Cup Final will be at Boundary Park on Saturday, March 30, and the Johnny Blair Memorial match will feature the under-11 teams of the competing Standard Cup finalists.

The curtain-raiser starts at 11am on Saturday, March 30 and will feature the under-11s of Waterhead Warriors and Higginshaw – the first of the three rugby league derbies over Easter Saturday and Easter Sunday and an all-Oldham affair.

The Standard Cup Final, blue riband event of the Oldham Amateur League, kicks off at 12.30pm on the same Saturday, March 30, featuring the pride of Oldham, Waterhead, against the pride of Rochdale, mighty Mayfield of the National Conference premier division.

Ticket details are as follows:

General admission (adults £5, concessions [under-18s. Over-65s] £3

Broadway Suite Hospitality (pie and peas) £20 per person

Executive Box (pie and peas) Box of ten £250; box of 12 £300

Turnstiles will open ahead of the under-11s final, with a specific opening time to be confirmed. The fans’ bar, Station Zebra, will also be open.

That brings us to Easter Sunday, March 31, the start of British Summer Time. It coincides with the Roughyeds’ first home league game against, would you believe, our closest derby rivals, Rochdale Hornets, who are tough nuts to crack anytime, let alone when several members of their squad were our players last year.

The Betfred League One season starts for us this Sunday, March 17, at Workington.

Jarrod Sammut, a mercurial Aussie half-back, has a history of defeating Oldham almost single-handedly. If Oldham can keep this 37-year-old quiet, they will be halfway there, but they know they will have to play much better than they did when beaten at Swinton and York in separate cup competitions.

*For more information, visit the Oldham Athletic and Oldham RLFC websites.