Firstly, Dave Thompson was a winger. You can be forgiven for that as he played one game and had a shocker which capped off an almost entirely anonymous stay at Leigh. Secondly, we have 27 currently in the squad, not 26. Thirdly, players like Mortimer, Langi and others arrived very late in the season only after Weston, Willie Tonga and others had either retired or moved on. We never had more than 28/29 players at the club at any point that season, 2 of which (Foster/Thompson) were lower end championship level at best and played 1 game between them.

The 2017 squad was alright, even good at times but it had a shocking discipline problem(here's looking at Acton, Higson, Hock for starters) and had a shocking defensive record (6 times we lost a game whilst scoring 22 or more points). I'd also contest your point about having 3 "brilliant but different hookers in Higham, Hood and Pellissier". All 3 of those hookers were pretty much the same type of player at varying stages of career - running hookers who were decent darting out from behind a quick ruck, but had poor distribution. Micky was very much struggling with the pace of the game by mid season. Jukes was also very much out of his depth and badly managed the squad.

Any 17 from the players you've listed for 2017, based on their performances/attitudes in that particular year, would get beat pretty comfortably by the 2023 17. We were so slow in defense around the ruck in 2017... Ipape, Asiata and Kai O'Donnell would have an absolute field day.

There's no doubting Ridyard was horribly mistreated in 2017. From getting thrown too soon whilst clearly still unfit for the first game against Castleford then Jukes stubbornly refusing to go back to what worked in 2016 when things started to go south from May onwards. Reynolds was equally mistreated, he played well early season but should have been taken out the firing line after his form dipped but Jukes persisted with him and he became the lightning rod for fans frustrations.

That all being said, Drinkwater was still our best halfback during that time and came in for a lot of unfair criticism because of Ridyards mistreatment.

Edit- just to add to Jukes mishandling, I still believe the 2018 fiasco would have been avoided by retaining McNally and Ridyard when we went down. The baby was well and truly thrown out with the bathwater by Cunningham and Jukes.

Good to see I managed to get such an impassioned reaction from fellow Leigh fans to my earlier posting. To Leyther Bob the 3 hookers were not identical. Mickey HIgham although at the end of his career could still accelerate over 10 yards and fool the best of defences-remember that try against the Wire? Hood was lethal like Roby near the line whereas Pellisier was a live wire around the ruck.
Like most people I could not understand the 3 defeats against Widnes. But for me the most inexplicable loss was the million pound game against Catalans. Only a few weeks previously we had absolutely destroyed the French in Perpignan in the middle 8’s by 30-6 in the best performance of the season- who can forget that 90 metre try from Corey Paterson. This seems to contradict the theory that we were burnt out at the end of the season, but does support the feeling that the coaching was not up to scratch. Don’t forget too, we would have stayed up in a normal season. Plus I will always remember our LSV derby victories over our Warrington, Wigan, Salford and St Helens especially the latter in front of 9,000.

You've just described 3 hookers that have a main strength in running game, they might have been slightly different in styles but they all relied on running the ball in rather than passing off the deck. None of them in 2021 had particularly good distribution from dummy half and the passing would be slow and inaccurate which would slow down our play. In contrast, Aaron Smith is primarily a ball playing hooker and his passing is reliably quick and accurate. Edwin Ipape is just a freak and has both a passing and running game far better than any hooker to ever play for Leigh.

Sep will or will not love this. Yes, Leigh had an unusually big pack then but became reliant on it. Widnes had an even larger 2017 pack and there was no Plan B.

Widnes 3-0 Leigh.

Btw: Congrats to Sep for topping the quiz amongst the Leythful!

All bodes to one thing as far as Im concerned. Coaches !!!!

I thought the 2017 team was half decent, but very poorly coached. Lam would have kept that Team up no problem.

Yes, I too am a bit concerned, especially the backs, but its the 17 fit players on the pitch that wins you the matches. No disrespect to Mellor or Reynolds, but i wish we had a World Class running 6. Ipape anyone ?