Quote CHEADLE LEYTHER="CHEADLE LEYTHER"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.