No respect for troubled Sheffield Eagles

Lewis Palfrey’s late drop goal earned the home side a 21-20 victory as Eagles failed to build on the momentum garnered following their unexpected victory over Bradford. Following a damning assessment of his side’s performance after the Easter Monday defeat to Dewsbury, Aston was again critical of his side’s desire to win.

“Nothing surprises me at this stage with our group” Aston said. “We have talked about having the right mentality coming to games likes this. We got beaten by a team that wanted it more. They were committed, we knew that they would be, every time you put yourself up to be shot, we are certainly shot, and we deserved to be shot. Respect is a wonderful word, you have to earn it. We are not earning it.”

It looked as though the Eagles were to rescue something from the game after being outplayed at the start of the second stanza.

Matt James crashed over to level the scores with around five minutes remaining, but a costly error gave Oldham field position from where they struck the decisive one pointer.

Despite getting back into the contest late on, Aston stressed that his side ended up with exactly what they deserved, whilst also lamenting his side’s lack of creativity.

“We didn’t deserve anything out of it. We were kidding ourselves if we thought we did,” he admitted.

“People may have been jumping up and down when we levelled the scores, but what did we do today? Why do we waste our time on a training field? When you break it down we scored two tries by kicks, one from dummy half and one from a short ball. If that is supposed to excite me, it certainly doesn’t.”

The defeat leaves the Eagles in seventh position in the Championship standings, but they receive a break from league action as they take on Super League side Wakefield Wildcats in round five of the Challenge Cup on Friday night.