Dons head coach reacts to thrilling win over Oldham

Having being restricted to just one score in the previous 63 minutes, third-placed Oldham scored three converted tries in 12 minutes to set up a nail-biting finish.

“We won but there were two good teams out there today and both had a very high completion rate,” said head coach Richard Horne. “It was end to end and both teams moved the ball about and defended well.

“Perhaps not from my point of view as a coach, but it was fantastic to watch and for over an hour we did everything right and led 26-4 and looked to be in total control against a very good team who are definitely going to be up there come the end of the season.

“We came in leading 16-4 at half time but I warned the players that we couldn’t shut up shop and we sort of did that at times. We just went one-out for a little bit and our line speed dropped off and we started losing the ruck and we let them get some momentum. Once you lose that it is hard to get it back.

“Having said that we scored a couple of good tries to extend our lead in the third quarter and I couldn’t see a way back for them at that stage.

“But they scored a couple of opportunist tries we could have dealt with better than we did because we had highlighted the threat posed by the likes of scrum-half Paga who is very quick and very strong.

“Fortunately, we held on to win but the last quarter took some of the gloss off what was an outstanding display for over an hour – the sort of performance we have been asking for.”

The game marked the 400th career appearance of second-rower Brett Ferres who has now scored five tries since his close season move from Featherstone.

“I thought he had a really good game and capped it with a try,” said Horne.

C entre Jason Tali returned to the starting line-up after picking up an injury in pre-season.

“Jason caused them problems in the first half with his strong running but he is short of match-fitness and faded in the second, but we sort of expected that and rolled the dice a bit but it paid off,” said Horne.