JOHN Oakes admitted he was delighted to play the full 80 minutes in Cougars’ iPro Sport Cup final win over York City Knights at Blackpool.

The imposing back-rower put in an outstanding shift as Paul March’s side saw off their League One rivals to lift the trophy.

Oakes played under March at York and Hunslet and was reunited with him following his arrival from the Coffs Harbour Comets in Australia, where he played for one season.

Oakes said: “I was delighted to get the win and I was quite happy with my own performance.

“There were a couple of little mistakes, but nothing too major.

“Generally, Marchy just says to the back rowers ‘go hard for as long as you can’ and then generally one of us will get swapped after 55, 60 minutes.

“But Ash Lindsay went off first and I just ended up staying on.

“Keighley is a good club with good lads here who have all made me feel welcome when I came back from Australia.

“It doesn’t get any better than winning a final but we have important business in the league and we want to do well in that too. No disrespect to the southern sides, but we have only really beaten them in the league this season.

“We lost to York and Doncaster, who are two of the stronger teams, so we haven’t really beaten an established club, so it was nice to come here and win. I thought the boys were excellent.”

Oakes runs a window cleaning business around West Yorkshire and is keen to stay at Cougar Park beyond the end of this season.

He added: “I’m just contracted until the end of the year at the moment and I’m not sure what will happen.

“But I’d love to stay because like I said before everyone has made me feel welcome – the fans, the players and the directors.

“You want to play at the best standard possible and it would be great to reach the Championship and play against the likes of Halifax and possibly Bradford if they don’t get promoted.

“It would be great to have those derbies.

“It’s up to Marchy and could also depend what league we are in, but we’ll see what happens.”