Would agree with that wholeheartedly.

Fantastic result for us considering key players we had out. Feeling much more confident for middle eights now. Need to keep up improvement next week at fax.

Me too

And I suspect most of the SL clubs would as well. I bet they'd gladly welcome us and our large and passionate away support over Salford and Wakey who bring very few and offer nothing to SL overall.

Completely agree with your final statement @Bull Mania

In fact a crowd of 9181 today, does this set a new Championship record in the modern RL era, I think it does & so a big rap to both sets of fans, showing some SL clubs the hunger for RL from both Clubs supporters.

As an aside, I would put this to anyone, if we were still operating under the licence system, I believe *maybe naively* that the plug would be pulled on Wakefield & they would be replaced with either Leigh or Bradford.

My reasoning, well empty or largely empty stadia such as seen at Wakefield & Salford does not make good TV, good atmospheres or a good advertisement for RL, especially for the top tier of SL.

Also worth considering, Leigh as a club have had so much Media coverage & as probably the most talked about club currently in British RL it would be very difficult to overlook the Club as a replacement for an ailing SL side.
Salford, with the Koukash factor & their proximity to Manchester would be safe from any cull IMHO.

Getting back to the point, yes both Bradford & Leigh would improve the outlook of SL, two teams that could genuinely add something positive.

Will it be extremely difficult for either side to achieve promotion, I think yes, however it is entirely possible for both to gain promotion & I sincerely hope so.

I have been telling fans on our own board for a long time that I saw enough from Bradford in Round 1 to believe they have real quality & are going to be very dangerous. Gaskell in particular I rate very highly & would love him to be at Leigh.
If both clubs play to their very best during the M8's, I think we.could do each other favours taking maybe a SL scalp each & upsetting the applecart.
Let's also not forget that Fax & the Eagles are no mugs & could on their day give one or more SL clubs a tough game & knock their confidence a touch.

Best of luck to you in the 8's & may the best Club or Clubs rise to the top.

Ste, what needs to happen as a bare minimum is that Bradford and leigh take the same SL scalp

Hadn't clocked this post earlier but yes, it's bang on that

Exactly what I was trying to convey in my last post.

Now wouldn't that be a beautiful thing Maurice.

Maybe Paul & Jimmy could could get together & make some plans.

By the way Moz, would you agree that both clubs will see 10k + home attendances during the 8's ?
I suspect Leigh having the smaller capacity Stadium could see a total sell out.

Should either club get to the promised land then a year of struggling in the bottom 4 would no doubt have an impact on the quantity of support. There's a reason why home attendances were lower than 9000 last year.

The 10k prospects would be the derbies and if the HKR fans travel in their 1000's or not, the 4v5 will be a sell out

Great game for me. Best of the season by far and a draw was the only fair result.

From our point of view, the improvement over the last few weeks was unreal in what was a genuine 80 minute performance from both sides. Plenty of errors, of course, as you'll always get when the action is so fast and furious, generally well refereed too, with the best ref we've had all year by far, quick PYBs, wow, who knew the game could be played like that?

Wonder how Jimmy is going to treat the final pre-eights game at the Shay - will we get the halves back [if fit] to get some game time or will it be the same again?

I think it's fair that as Lowes has attracted a fair amount of criticism for how things have gone recently he should be fully lauded for his massive influence on the team recently ..... maybe it was a match that mattered more than some others recently, and maybe the middle eights will attract a similar approach. Seems fair he gets the credit.

I do hope Lowes saw how a game can change by bringing on a fresh hooker. Higham was a huge threat.

Please tell me that's a windup

Leigh have certainly had huge column inches in the national media this year, plus the Wire CC game had the highest tv ratings of any game so far this season - I 'friend' within the BBC said it was higher than some RU 6 nations games!! (2 million at points)

The Bulls have been in a few "big" games over the past few years but I'd never say that they were the most talked about RL team in the country and I don't know why I'd ever need to? What is the purpose of making such a statement regardless of how ludicrous it is?