Ankle injury sees captain Roberts join Oban Lorne casualty list
Oban Lorne RFC captain Iwan Roberts will be on the sidelines for the rest of the season following a nasty ankle injury sustained during a 15-0 defeat against Dalziel last weekend.
An X-ray on Sunday morning confirmed a fractured fibula.
The Green Machine had been looking to keep their West Division Two title challenge on track at Motherwell against the team one position above them in the league.
Instead, a spate of injuries has left Andrew Johnston and the Oban Lorne coaching team with a major headache going forward.
Nevertheless, the head coach took a lot of positives from the display, if not the result, and will look for his team to get back on track this weekend when they travel to Coatbridge to play Waysiders Drumpellier.
‘With a mounting injury list and a number of players unavailable, the coaching team will have their work cut out trying to get a balanced team out this weekend,’ said Johnston.
‘Ferg McCoss will come back in for Iwan and hopefully big Eric Roberts will get over the back injury that has kept him out of the last couple of games.
‘When Oban managed to get clean ball last week they looked the more dangerous attack but the defence of both teams was the key factor on the day.
‘There were few glimpses of the open attacking rugby which has been the Oban trademark in recent times but on the rare occasions they did break out they managed to string some nice passages of play together.’
The Oban scrum and lineout were under pressure from the start last weekend and the front row dominance from Dalziel led to a number of penalties which the hosts duly converted to turn at half time with a 9-0 lead.
The start of the second half brought more disruption with David Cameron and Daniel Broderick both sutstaining hamstring injuries while the home team continued to dominate the set piece, adding two more penalties in the second half to make the final score 15-0.
RUGBY
Oban Lorne Ladies hosted Stewartry in a Tennent’s National League Division One game at Glencruittten last Sunday.
Despite a spirited performance the Oban side lost
34-5.