Oldham R.L.F.C.
Oldham Rugby League Football Club, is a professional rugby league football club based in Oldham, Greater Manchester, England. The club plays home games at Boundary Park and competes in Championship, the second tier of British rugby league.
Oldham have won the League Championship four times, Challenge Cup three times and the Second Division three times.
The clubs traditional home kits are red and white hooped jerseys, navy blue shorts and red socks. They share a local rivalry with Rochdale Hornets, Salford Red Devils and Swinton Lions and cross county rivalries with nearby Huddersfield Giants and Halifax.
History
Early years
In 1876, Oldham Football Club was founded in a meeting at the Prince Albert Hotel, Union Street West, attended by Chairman of the Watch Committee, William Chadwick, Chief Constable Charles Hodgkinson, mill owner Fred Wild, eminent local Quaker and Lord to be Alfred Emmott and three brothers of the Fletcher family.A playing field was organised at Sugar Meadow, Gartside Street adjacent to Glodwick Spinning Mill and changing facilities were provided by the nearby Shakespeare Inn. The club's headquarters were at the Black Swan Hotel, Bottom O'th Moor, Mumps. Their first match at Sugar Meadow was held on 21 October 1876 against Stalybridge. After two seasons they joined Oldham Cricket Club at the new Clarksfield ground before finding a more permanent home in 1889 at Watersheddings.
Oldham were one of the twenty-one clubs that left the Rugby Football Union to form the Northern Union in 1895. Oldham were fourth in the first title race of 1895–96 and second a year later. They were the second club to win the Challenge Cup after beating Hunslet 19–9 in 1899. Batley had won the first two finals.
Oldham finally won their first Championship title in 1904–05, just edging out Bradford Northern by three points. Oldham won the Lancashire League in 1897–98, 1900–01 and 1907–08 as well as the Lancashire County Cup in 1906–07. In the 1907–08 season, Oldham finished as league leaders but Hunslet were crowned champions in their historic all-four cups season after winning the Championship Final 12–2 in a replay after an initial 7–7 draw.
Another title success followed in 1909–10 as they beat Wigan in the Championship final. Also in that same season they managed to win the Lancashire League and Lancashire Cup. The following season, 1910–11, they beat Wigan again in the Championship final.
Oldham's record attendance was set in 1912 when the visit of Huddersfield for a league match drew 28,000 spectators.
Oldham won the Lancashire League in 1921–22 and the Lancashire Cup in 1912–13, 1918–19 and 1923–24. The annual Law Cup was first contested against neighbours Rochdale Hornets on 7 May 1921. Having lost in the 1907, 1912 and 1924 Challenge Cup Finals, they finally won the trophy again in 1925 when they beat Hull Kingston Rovers 16–3 at Headingley, Leeds.
They beat the visiting Australasian team of the 1921–22 Kangaroo tour of Great Britain 15–5.
The club's last Challenge Cup final was in 1927 when they beat Swinton 26–7 at Central Park, Wigan, their fourth consecutive final and revenge for their 9–3 defeat when the same teams met in the previous year's match. In 1932–33, Oldham won the Lancashire Cup again.
Post-war
In the 1950s, Oldham won the Championship and other trophies with a side that included Alan Davies, John Etty, goalkicker Bernard Ganley, Jack Keith, Sid Little, Frank Pitchford, Derek 'Rocky' Turner, Don Vines and Charlie Winslade.On Monday 15 September 1952, record receipts were taken from a gate of 19,370 at Watersheddings to watch Oldham take on the Kangaroo tourists. The Australians lost only one of twenty-two club matches in Britain during that tour, but came close to defeat at Oldham, where the Roughyeds held them to a 7–7 draw.
Oldham played in the 1954–55 Championship Final at Maine Road, Manchester against Warrington. They also lost the Lancashire Cup final in a 2–12 defeat by Barrow in 1954.
Oldham's success in the 1950s also included a Championship title – in 1956–57; the Lancashire League 1956–57 and 1957–58 and the Lancashire Cup 1955–56, 1956–57 and 1957–58. Oldham lost 16–13 to Wigan in the 1966 Lancashire Cup Final. In 1964, Oldham reached the semi-finals of the Challenge Cup against Hull Kingston Rovers, the tie is remembered for taking three games to find the winner, the first match at Headingley finished 5–5, the replay at Station Road, Swinton finished prematurely 17–14 in Oldham's favour when the game was abandoned midway through the second half due to bad light, and the third game was won by Hull Kingston Rovers 12–2 at Fartown, Huddersfield.
Oldham were Division Two champions in 1963–64.
At the end of a disastrous 1969–70 season, when Oldham finished 29th out of 30 clubs in a single division, the committee was voted out of office en bloc and replaced by nine new officials and a new chairman in Arthur Walker. They brought in Graham Starkey as player-coach.
Dave Cox coached Oldham for 18 months until December 1978.
In the 1983–84 season, Oldham lost just two of their opening 11 Division One fixtures but collapsed around Christmas. After four defeats in five games, January's home game against Leigh descended into a mass brawl before the referee abandoned the match. Both clubs were fined £1,000 and coach Peter Smethurst decided to quit. The club committee asked his assistant, Frank Barrow to step into the breach. His first game was against rock-bottom Whitehaven, winless after 22 matches. But the Cumbrians ran in seven tries, handing Oldham a 42–8 mauling, and prompting Barrow to resign minutes after the game. He was replaced on a temporary basis by Brian Gartland.
Oldham pleaded with the local council for a financial bail-out in April 1987. Oldham decided to float as a public limited company and sold their training ground to the council in May 1987. Oldham won the 1988 Division Two title and the Division Two Premiership but lost £135,000. They would win the Premiership again in 1989–90.
Peter Tunks took over a coaching role with Oldham. Tunk's brief was clear: He had to sell most of his first team squad that had been relegated twice in 3 years, help to pay a tax bill of over 1 million pounds and sign promising players from the junior ranks. He narrowly missed promotion in the first year and took the team to the grand final where they were narrowly beaten. Over the next 2 years he got promotion to the top level for all the Oldham teams whilst getting young players like Chris Joynt, Barrie McDermott, David Bradbury, Gary Christie and Tommy Martyn to international level but due to the clubs massive debts run up by the previous management, Tunks was forced to sell his best players. Bob Lindner took over as captain-coach. The club sold the dilapidated Watersheddings in June 1994 for £1.25m to pay-off debts and moved to Oldham Athletic's Boundary Park stadium on the nearby Chadderton/Royton boundary.
When a Rupert Murdoch funded Super League competition was proposed, part of the deal was that some traditional clubs would merge. Oldham were supposed to merge with Salford to form a club to be known as Manchester which would compete in the Super League. When Salford visited Oldham for a match on Good Friday, 14 April, supporters of both clubs demonstrated against the unpopular idea by invading the pitch during the interval. This merger was resisted and instead they adopted the name Oldham Bears and were founder members of the new league.
Relegation came in the second year of the new summer season, 1997, when they finished below Paris Saint-Germain. At campaign's end, an attempt was made by chairman Jim Quinn to sell the team for an undisclosed price tag, with debts reportedly between £500,000 and £1,000,000. Instead, the club went bankrupt soon after, with its actual liabilities pegged at £2,000,000. A new team Oldham Roughyeds was then formed in December to play at a lower level. The new club was created by Chris Hamilton and a band of three directors. The Roughyeds tag had been a long accepted nickname for the old club. It is however generally accepted that the new club is a legal continuation of the old club formed in 1876.
The Millennium
retired as player-coach of Oldham in 2001 and in January the following year took up a post as defensive co-ordinator with the Irish Rugby Football Union. Oldham put Mark Knight in temporary charge of the first team. After a successful 2001 season, they narrowly missed out on promotion to the Super League, losing to Widnes 12–24 in the Northern Ford Premiership Grand Final.During the 2002 season they played at Ashton United's Hurst Cross ground in Ashton-under-Lyne, due to a dispute with Oldham Athletic over the use of Boundary Park.
Steve Molloy took charge of the Roughyeds after former boss John Harbin left to join Oldham Athletic as fitness conditioner and sports psychologist in July 2002. Under Molloy, Oldham won seven and drew two of their last 14 games. In doing so Oldham finished high enough to gain entry into National League One when the Northern Ford Premiership was split into two. In the first season of National League One, 2003, Oldham reached the last four of the play-offs. Although they still made the play-offs for the next couple of seasons trouble was waiting in the wings. Those troubles surfaced in March 2005, Oldham entered a creditors' voluntary agreement with total debts of £325,000.
John Pendlebury resigned after three games as coach in March 2006 and was replaced by Steve Deakin, with very little money to spend and a poor squad the team finished the 2006 season with only one league win and were relegated to National League Two, the season ended on a high note though because the club paid its final payment of the CVA and would start the next season debt free. The Roughyeds also announced that they would stay at Boundary Park for the 2007 season after reaching agreement on a sliding scale rent.