WHAT another great week for the club -- Last Sunday's game against Workington was never going to be easy, but we came through with flying colours.

I really thought Town would give us a bigger fight but once we had eased ahead there was no looking back. I took Martin Wood off purely as a precaution more than anything.

He was suffering from a little double vision, more from the heat than from the game itself, but by then we had the game in the bag and I knew I would need all my big guns out for the trip to Oldham -- and what a trip that turned out to be.

You won't find another game this season with that sort of intensity, except perhaps in the play-offs, so we know exactly what we have to expect come July.

Defensively we were absolutely superb, making 301 tackles in the game. That's an incredible amount of work to get through in any game.

Nathan Antonik topped the tackle count with 40 and Jason Ramshaw tackled himself to a standstill in the second half, ending the night with a total of 39. His aggressive defence really led the line and in the end I sensed his legs had given out and brought Danny Seal back on.

I knew it was going to be a battle and had already made the replacements early on to prepare for a tense last quarter, and perhaps that was where we eventually won it, with superior fitness.

EVERYONE watching us these past few weeks must have noticed how well the team has gelled together.

Team spirit has never been higher and you can see that when the other players congratulate both try scorers and those who make the try.

We are very organised in defence and regularly train with the left defence against the right side and vice versa. Because of that there is now a big rivalry between the two sides and non bigger than that between Woody and Paul Harrison who is constantly on Woody's back, in a friendly sort of way, and now there's a mini-competition as to who is the best in defence.

I gave the lads Thursday evening off from training, I think they deserved that after their efforts at Boundary Park, but they all came in for physio checks -- just to make sure everyone is ready for the task against Batley on Sunday.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.