Preview: Oldham RLFC vs London Broncos, Pre-season, 4/2/24.

The Broncos have already had two other pre-season games in 2024 against Castleford Tigers, where we drew 14-14, and Huddersfield Giants, where we lost 50-16.

This weekend’s matchup is the third and final opportunity for the Broncos to prepare themselves for the upcoming 2024 Super League season and, after facing two Super League opponents for the upcoming season, we face a different and interesting challenge in League one side Oldham.

Ahead of this weekend’s final preseason fixture we caught up with one of our fan favourites and long-time Bronco, Iliess Macani, who says “We have a couple of wrong’s to right this weekend.

“We know what happened last weekend against Huddersfield wasn’t quite what we were looking to get out of that game.

“We hope to hit the ground running again this weekend and hopefully build up and get ready for the St Helens game”.

We also caught up with Director of Rugby & Performance, Mike Eccles, who says “I’m happy that everybody has been getting minutes recently and this week we will player a smaller squad to expose the players a little bit more in terms of usual spells which they would be doing against St Helens and hopefully we come through unscathed, and we are fit for the week after.

Another tough one… we’ve taken what we could (pre-season gmaes) this year which was two Super League games and, albeit, a league one team but in my eyes and on paper a top end championship team”.

Oldham finished 4^th in League One in 2023 with a record of 12 wins, 5 losses and 1 draw in 18 games. Oldham have already played two other games in pre-season, beating fellow League one side Keighley Cougars 46-10 on boxing day, followed by a 24-20 victory over championship side Halifax at Boundary Park in the first round of the 1895 cup.

We have played against Oldham RLFC 30 times, winning 17 of these games & the last 13 in a row, most recently a 30-20 win on the 1^st of August 2021. This final runout ahead of the regular season is certainly a great opportunity for the Broncos to put some of their hard work from the training ground into practice and to build some confidence for their first Super League matchup of the year vs St Helens in two weeks.