Please bongser can’t you be persuaded to reinstate your famous/infamous (delete as appropriate) predictions competition next season (hopefully in Superleague), so we can have more of your eccentric musings next season??!!

Harrumph
(As per Blazing Saddles).

Despite
Team Played Won Lost Drawn For Against Points Difference Points
Leigh Centurions 22 1 0 982 188 794 42

My conclusion is that this team is capable of so much more. For that reason I am holding my own council and just letting the weeks roll down to the playoffs.

However, against Barrow, Leigh scored 3 tries from dummy half (scruffy little tries) but we did score some good tries especially McDonnell who took a wonderful line for his try, and O'Donnell's break for Mellor.

The try of the match goes to Barrow who flung the ball about and finished a wonderful move to polite applause from the Leigh fans.

Mellor was superb, but Lachy is still learning the playbook and looked disjointed.

Will be happier to see 4 Props in the match day squad, so we can back to steam rolling down the middle.

Earlier in the season one of the Fev fans was saying that points difference did not matter. He was absolutely right of course with 338 points separating Leigh and Fev with 5 games to go.

Our team is working well behind the scenes to it feels, much like all those programmers who worked furiously on codings to make sure the millennium bug didn't become a problem it could and was prophesied to be.

The thing is that, for example the BBC pay so little attention to anything outside Super League (bar Cornwall, Patton's 7 game ban, the signing of Blake Ferguson & the, errrm, "conscious uncoupling" of John Kear & Bradford) have they even spotted the possibility and unleashed the coders?

SS,

What I actually said is that I didn't believe that the points difference would not matter come the end of the regular season. With Leigh and Fev playing each other three times one team was always going to have at least one more win that the other, so in all likelihood "points difference" was unlikely to separate the teams in terms of league positions.
Fact of the matter is that come the final in the playoffs then the points that the two finalist have amassed in the season to that point will be immaterial and all that will matter is the score at the end of those 80 minutes. Though I can't see anything other than Leigh getting back into SL at this point in time.

Fev are on course to break the 1,000 mark in the points scored column too (though probably not in the points difference one). FG you are right to point to a one off game, and again right in thinking that Leigh have the edge at present. But there are plenty of worriters amongst the Leigh fans - not just Bongser, Vanners and the latter's unhatched chickens. S'pose we'll see in due course.

Should be a comfy home victory for your boys this Sunday. It is however to be hoped that there is no heat exhaustion suffered by any player from any side.

Fevgrinder, you are absolutely correct. In the play off final, its down to 80 minutes of rugby, two teams of 13 on the pitch, one against the other. One team wins by a point and promotion is theirs. For all Leigh's dominance against Fev this season no one on this site can guarantee the result and that it will be Leigh that is promoted.

Yet, the position is more nuanced than that.

Points difference counts for everything or, rather, it could have counted for an awful lot. It has been a close affair for most of the season for the top spot in the Championship. It is only in the last few weeks that Leigh have opened a gap over Fev that I cannot see Fev closing. Top spot guarantees home venue for the play-off final for the winners of the semi's.

Let's just imagine that it is Leigh and Fev in the final. As things stand the final is at LSV rather than at Fev's quaint ground where they are masters of the surface, slope, elements etc. I was there in February when we got trounced. I have been there numerous times in the past when the same thing has happened. To be quite frank, I would not like the final, with everything at stake, to be anywhere near Fev's ground.

Given the final is to be played at a time of year when the weather cannot be guaranteed it is, in my opinion, crucial that Leigh play that game at the LSV since the superb ground will take some of the weather vagaries ie mud, wind, out of the equation. It will be its usual billiard table quality. Its flat and big and suits fast, top of the ground rugby - it suits Leigh's style of play. It also takes away any advantage that Fev would have enjoyed had they played it at their ground. This is why the points difference was so crucial. As it is, it will not matter because Leigh have pulled away and the teams will not finish the regular season on the same number of points but had they done so ,as it seemed to be be the case for so long, then it would have been very important indeed.

Secondly, the final will not be won simply because Leigh have beaten Fev 3 times already this season. Yet it is wrong to think that Leigh's dominance over Fev doesn't count in a one off game. Of course it does. It counts for a lot. Why, because Fev players know, from those defeats, that they have been second best. Lots of rubbish is spoken about 'learning from defeats' and 'taking positives from defeats' but, I think that is just sports psychobabble (can I say on this site because that is more accurately the word that I wanted to use to make the point).

Fev players will go in to this, imagined for one moment, play-off final knowing, deep deep down in the recesses of their minds that the same thing is likely to happen again. Sure, it does not guarantee that the same result will happen but being second best does not inspire a confidence and self belief in a player that previous results mean, in reality, that you are actually better than the team that has been beating you in the past 3 outings.

Sporting history is full of red hot favourites that did not win. The contributors and Leigh Fans on this site are not stupid. We know that Leigh are only one really bad game, one sending off, one bad refereeing decision, one cruel bounce of the ball from everything that has gone before this season counting for nowt. But Leigh will be playing at the LSV and will have a psychological advantage. Usually, usually, red hot favourites win and for my money Leigh this season are as near as damn it red hot favourites and, they will beat Fev, if both teams get to the final.

Fev fans, and I have seen and read their arguments on their site, are holding out for key players returning from injury, the weather/pitch being more of a leveller, the games against Leigh being closer in reality than scorelines have suggested (I'm tempted to use a previous word again!) and the shaman like quality and winning history of their coach in a one off, winner takes all game, means that Fev have every chance of success in a final against Leigh.

If I was a Fev fan i would probably be saying this as well but, if I was, then I would also know that I was clutching at straws. Everything that I have seen this season about the development of the Leigh squad and the steady progression of style of play and the obvious camaraderie amongst a tight knit squad and coaching team points to only one winner in the play-off final.

Let's not be shy about saying what we think! It is not tempting fate to say that Leigh will win.

With regard to my posting immediately before this one I refer to using a word. The word appears in the posting as 'rubbish'.

Just to clarify, I did not type or use the word 'rubbish'. I was a bit more colloquial than that!.

Hopefully you can all guess the actual word that I used.

Seems like there is some form of censorship in place - shame

Good heavens Jack. I’ve been ignoring my backyard chicken’s egg boxes for weeks now and you’ve gone and said it !
In all seriousness though, it is hard to argue against all you say.
Especially how important point difference could have been. I would not be confident of a win at Fev, I am more comfortable should we be at the LSV.

To Chayders:

Infamous Prediction League? Maybe but only if there were to be a quorum of tipsters - many of the previous contestants are conspicuous by their absence from these threads.

Went on the less verbose Superleigh Predictor last night (sporadically remember to do so). Today's prediction 10-54. It's a little cooler today and I'm guessing there'll be water breaks around the 20 minute mark in each half. It happened in the Brentford v Utd match yesterday (first half watched in The Egerton with Oirish Mick - and very potty-mouthed he was!)

To Jack:

Had you been around at the time and read the prediction league thread, you'd already know all about automated moderation. Once used the original Danish spelling of the king we dub Canute. It was, when posted, auto-moderated to "Spiffing Chap".

One poster used to add a letter I to the word that you tried to use and the resultant branch of Islam slipped past AM. However, bearing in mind what recently befell Salman Rushdie, Bongser would not advocate doing things that way.

Instead take a word from Oirish Mick's potty - "shoite" is fine!

Well, that’s the thousand up. So far ‘planes have not been dropping Icarus like from the sky. We wait under the sword of Damocles (and in Bongser's case under the kitchen table) until the league tables update just before 5pm.

Phew!

While I agree that Leigh are not guaranteed promotion (just remember the Catalans millionaire game at the LSV, when we were odds on favourites), why is everyone assuming it will be Featherstone in the final? Their form of the last month does not indicate they will get past Halifax who are their most likely opponents in the semi final, and should have won the league game at Fev. earlier this season.

I think it could be either Fax or Barrow and that's not saying that we couldn't slip up.