Oldham fall short against Hoylake

Oldham’s first game of 2025 was a trip to the end of the Wirral estuary for a bottom of the league clash with Hoylake.

Hoylake started the brightest and scored following ten minutes. Discipline was the key to the first half with Oldham spending most of it defending their own line and not having any ball. The concession of 6 penalties on the bounce led to the first yellow card for repeated infringements putting Oldham down to 14. 5 minutes later Oldham were then down to 13 following an off the ball incident.

Oldham’s continuous poor discipline and then poor decision making with the ball compounded the rest of the half with Hoylake running in three further tries to leave the halftime score at 26 – 0 in the home team’s favour.

It is fair to say that there were a few choice words from the coaching staff at the break and Oldham seemed to be a different side in the 2^nd half. Josh Semple and Gareth Dawson came off the bench to breath some impetus into the back row and within 5 minutes Oldham finally got on the score sheet through Chris Shaw.

Following some good hands from Corey Kelly and Lewis Ward, Shaw joined the line and kicked through before outpacing the defence to score. Nick Hackman led from the front with carry after carry along with Jack Taylor and the evergreen Paul Wardle. Louis Fitton was next to score following Tom Davies hitting a great line from centre to claw Oldham further back into the game.

Oldham had found the impetus and had decided to run the ball at every opportunity. Jordan McEwan was next to trouble the scorer going from a quick tap penalty. With two of the three tries converted by Alex Jobson, Oldham were back in the game at 26-19 however the poor discipline came back into Oldham’s game allowing Hoylake to score a converted try and a penalty to take it out to 36 - 19 .

Oldham would have the final say of the game when Nick Hackman went over following a cross field kick from McEwan. Oldham would have one further chance just before the final whistle when Jack Taylor made a break through the defence with the pass not going to hand on the line. With that the ref blew the final whistle at 36-26 to Hoylake.

A poor first half from Oldham which probably cost them the game.