Alan, you are closer than most outside of God’s county so count your blessings, and you also get the chance to travel over here to watch the beautiful game.

I am genuinely sorry to see Leigh down at the moment. I hope that you find your way and make it back to the top flight at some point. But I think some of your fans are being unfair to your owner Derek Beaumont. His passion for the club has been plain to see. To question his commitment at this stage is unfair. If as I have read on here, he and his company have lent the club £1.7 Million AND if as I have also read on here he has said he will bite the bullet and take that debt with him when he leaves. I don't know what more he could do for the club he obviously loves. Accepting that he cannot put anymore into the club, he has done right by you by leaving you in the best possible position he can to find new backers, Good luck to you for the future.

Also, we set up an academy but we still have local lads being picked up by the likes of Leeds and Hudds but also Warrington and other clubs over your side. What a nightmare but, we could have used all these excuses and not started it, but we did and it’s paying dividends. I’d say that from Fax lads in SL this year then you’d have the start of a decent team.

Hang on Norman! What I was trying to say, in my usual subtle way, is that I consider you lot to be on the 'Dark Side' and us to be in 'God's own county'!



Meanwhile, I will be rooting for you guys to do well, in the '8's' and' if you don't get promoted, then at least I'll be delighted to travel over to the 'Dark side' and visit Fax, Fev, Batley, Dewsbury etc next season. (providing we don't end up in liquidation, and League1!!)

You joined RLFANS just to post that....BLESS ! Pathetic

Haha, I know.
I’d be surprised if we went up but you just never know, team spirit has carried us a long way in the past (86/87) and these guys ate channeling that spirit. If we don’t go up I think you guys will be OK as you are a good proposition to somebody, good ground, good crowds.
Derek did his best but had no patience, you would have gone back up if you’d kept your squad from last year with a couple of additions.

Norman , Similarily with Bradford ' if you produce them it is almost impossible to keep them , there are several players at our SL neighbours ( England Internationals ) who we had at scholarship level but were ' poached' at academy induction

You have to consider the return on investment

I'd like to thank Neil and Derek for getting us promoted to SL and for being competitive in it , we genuinely were a bounce of a ball or a dodgy refs call from staying up

This is very true, and to add context. If Jack Smith had correctly called out Nick Scruton for not getting to his feet at the PTB and awarded Leigh the most blatant RL penalty I have ever seen, Leigh would have finished 3rd in the 8's and auto qualified. That is the margin.

One call would not have brought about that result. If you had won that match the whole scenario would have changed. For example we would have fielded a much more experienced team against Catatalan. That was a match we only just lost fielding a very weakened team as we had already qualified.

Im not saying that you would not have stayed in SL only that it is not as simple as you make out.

Yes, but Leigh would have been in the ascendancy from a flying qualifiers start but it is all irrelevant. The club also made some poor decisions but my point was to highlight that we also suffered some terribly bad luck with a very competitive team, mainly holding its own, first season back in SL.

That may be true but it doesn't alter the fact that that was a truly awful decision and we had a lot of those go against us last year and not just from referees. The disciplinary decision to allow Greg Bird to play in the million pound game was a joke.