Oldham 46 Doncaster 24: Red card adds insult to injury as Doncaster go down again

Watched by the legendary Bev Risman, president of the RFL, the Dons couldn’t prevent Oldham storming to their third home win in a row, piling up a total of 25 tries in the process.

The Roughyeds also had a man sent off as a result of the same incident, prop Jason Boults getting his marching orders for retaliating to the Kesik tackle.

Referee Clint Sharrad consulted both touch judges and then had no hesitation in pointing both players to the dressing room towards the end of a game that, up to that point, had been played in good spirit.

Boults, formerly with Bradford and Halifax, went 11 years as a pro without once receiving a red card, yet this was the second time in consecutive matches that he finished the game early.

After playing up the slope in the first half, and turning around only 16-10 in arrears, Tony Miller’s men must have been reasonably satisfied with their efforts.

Noted for being slow starters, they were once again caught napping in the first few minutes when their defence was opened up all too easily for Ben Wood and John Clough to score early tries an impressive-looking home side.

Left-wing Stuart Sanderson crashed over in the corner, following good work by Mike Emmett and Nev Morrison, as the Dons hit back, but the visitors’ defence was soon split wide open again when Wood went in for his second try through a back line that looked particularly vulenerable out wide on its right-hand side.

Kesik came off the bench as replacement hooker midway through the half and immediately went close to scoring with a determined dash from dummy-half.

Roughyeds held him up over the line, but they were powerless to stop him on his next sortie from the back of the ruck when he spotted a gap, brushed off Neil Roden’s tackle, and scored a try which Scott Spaven converted to keep Dons in contention at the half-way mark.

They needed to begin strongly down the slope in the second half, but they were slow to start once again, conceding further tries by Paul Noone and Carl Forber in the first eight minutes after the break.

Carl Hughes fashioned a 50th-minute try for Dean Colton to keep them hanging in there at 28-14, but Oldham sealed a well-deserved win with tries by Mark Brocklehurst and Ben Heaton in the 53rd and 62nd minutes to tgive themselves a commanding 40-14 lead.

To their credit, the visitors continued to battle hard right up until the end and they were rewarded when Carl Hughes scored a solo try direct from a midfield scrum and again in the last minute, when Spaven scuttered under the posts for a try which he also converted.

In between, Boults had gone in for Oldham’s eighth try and Forber had added his seventh goal from eight attempts in stark contrast to Spaven, who converted two from five.

Oldham: Heaton; Brocklehurst, Noone, Wood, Gillam; N Roden, Forber; Boults, Clough, Ellison, Clarke, Bentley, M Roden. Substitutes: Stenchion, Ward, Whitmore, Sutton.

Doncaster: Fawcett; Colton; Spurr, Morrison, Sanderson; Dobek, Spaven; Scott, P Hughes, Crawley, Robinson, Steen, Emmett. Substitutes: Kesik, C Hughes, Ely, Lawton.

Referee: C Sharrad (RFL).