By DAVE HADFIELD
SO they’ve only gone and done it! Now the battle for Super League survival begins for Leigh.
You’ll forgive me, I trust, if I remind you that I have argued repeatedly that it was by no means Mission Impossible for a Championship side to win promotion under the “Three Eights” structure.
All it needed was the right team, at the right time, with the right attitude.
You can add to that the right opposition; that turned out to be a Huddersfield outfit that competed for the top spot in Super League last season, but didn’t start playing on Saturday until they had let 40 points in.
Obviously, Leigh will not expect other Super League opposition to be as generous.
They will also know that, brilliant as they are capable of being, sustaining a level of performance across 80 minutes is even more important.
Perhaps the most remarkable thing about their achievement is that it comes at the end of a season in which they lost the two individuals most closely associated with their campaign for Super League – Paul Rowley and Ryan Brierley – plus a number of other players who have been cherry-picked by the Toronto Wolfpack.
That and an owner in Derek Beaumont who seemed in danger of, spiralling out of control at times.
It’s quite an effort and, if Leigh can resist the tendency to fight among themselves, it could be the start of prolonged good times.
The Spanish Centurions…
HAD YOU been in a certain modest beach-front hotel in Spain whilst Leigh’s match against Hull KR was being played, you might have heard something that sounded familiar, but somehow strangely different.
Not so much ‘Ole, Ole, Ole’ in fact, as ‘O Leigh, O Leigh, O Leigh.’
My best mate and l were reduced to following the action on the internet.
There were wild scenes of celebration at the Hotel Casablanca in Almunecar and numerous choruses of ‘Juan Matty Dawson’, ‘Juan Martyn Ridyard’ and so on.
I’m not exactly a Leyther myself, but I’m always prepared to help them out when they’re short of numbers for a celebration.
THERE were a number of causes for celebration on this research trip to the Costa Tropical.
One was that we have now both qualified as Pensionistas, which sounds a lot more exotic than the alternative expression – old gits.
Among other things, that gave us half-price admission to the bird park, the archaeological museum and the bonsai museum.
The latter is one of the biggest in Spain, although given its subject matter it has to be debatable whether that‘s a good thing or not.
News filtered through to Almunecar that one distinguished Pensionista has been considering handing in his bus-pass for the time being.
Jamie Peacock is, as I write, on the point of coming out of retirement to help Hull KR retain their Super League place.
There’s a long tradition of this sort of thing.
Dean Bell and Andrew Johns are two legendary names that spring to mind.
It was something that James was adamant that he was not going to do, but I had a suspicion that the itch was still there.
Bragging Right
RUGBY League got a good mention on Radio 4 this week on Melvyn Bragg’s series A Matter of the North.
It was all about what it means to be a Northerner, including within the sphere of sport.
It made the point that the game is an expression of the extra competitiveness that is part of our northern DNA.
The series is over now, but you can still get it on BBC iPlayer and it’s well worth a listen.
