Quote: Johnny Headline "Although Leigh are not my favourite team and I am not always impressed with the way DB comes across in the media you cannot knock his financial support & ability to attract quality players to the club. '"
This is one of the big problems. Derek isn't perfect, he has a bad habit of always having to have the last word & is far too easily wound up be people deliberately trying to wind him up at times. However he's a gift to the RL press with how they can take him out of context. I remember when the salary cap went up & Henderson at London spoke out against it, a few days later there was at a Q&A evening with the new players & Derek, someone asked about Henderson's comments & Derek made a half joking response. The next week the RL papers were full of "Beaumont hits back at Henderson!" and it was all rubbish. If you only know Derek from the way the media portray him you may very well think he's this egomaniacal, angry, argumentative bloke however actually listen to what he has to say himself in context & it's clear he's got a lot of passion for Leigh, knows his Rugby, respects his players & loves what he's doing.
I do think it's slightly amusing that so many of the journalists who've been gleefully printing any dirt on the club they could find or invent, full of opinion & conjecture about how the club is in turmoil have now changed their tune & are calling the club unprofessional for releasing statements to clarify some of their rumors. Could it be some of them knew full well they were being used by a certain player to get what he wanted made public & now don't want to be shown up.