Championship club promise more ‘big name’ signings after Super League additions

Oldham still have two or three big name signings still to announce, according to managing director Mike Ford. The Roughyeds romped to promotion from League One this season, finishing seven points clear of their nearest competitors to seal automatic promotion back to the Championship.

They’ve certainly made a few waves on their return to the second tier, too, with their recruitment ensuring competition has had no choice but to sit up and take notice of Sean Long’s side. Gil Dudson was the first Super League player to make the move to Boundary Park for 2025 after leaving Warrington Wolves and he has been joined at the club by former Huddersfield Giants and Castleford Tigers man Adam Milner.

The club have secured the services of Hull KR full-back Phoenix Laulu-Togaga’e on a season-long loan deal, too. However, Oldham have also been linked to the signing of former Warrington, KR and Catalans Dragons playmaker Josh Drinkwater, who is without a club after playing out his contract at the Halliwell Jones Stadium.

Ford didn’t name names, but speaking in an interview posted on the club’s official channels, he did reveal that more high profile additions are on the way for the Roughyeds.

“We’ve at least two, if not three players to announce yet, we just have to do some final negotiations with them guys,” he said on the Boundary Line. “The squad has got better again and we needed to because we’re in the Championship.

“You could argue we’ve gone 50/50 on experience and youth but straight away, straight off the bat we’re going to be a very difficult team to beat. If you look our defence last year, to go seven times without the opposition scoring and the last four games here (at home) was nil, which is incredible.

“Sean will lay the detail with defence again so we’re going to be hard to beat and then we have a little bit of star dust with PLT and Riley Dean, who played for Ireland. We’re very excited and we had a coaches meeting last week at Melrose, that’s a fantastic facility.”

Ford also spoke about a recent meeting they had with Joe McNicholas, a former Oldham player who is now on the performance staff at NRL champions Penrith Panthers.

“We had a meeting with Joe McNicholas, the older supporters will remember Joe as a winger back here around 2000 and 2001 and now he’s the strength and conditioning guy for Penrith Panthers, he’s been there eight years and they’ve won the Grand Final for the last four years,” he added.

“We were just sharing ideas and we were mesmerised with the conversation of what Penrith Panthers do and where we’re at in our cycle, the relationship we’re building there with the Panthers is fantastic. We trained once last week which is a six week start on everyone else.”