Haha, not sure it's best do 'expectations'.

things we'd like to happen are fine - it's only when we start 'expecting' them to happen that serious disappointment springs into view.....

I'm not sure about that.

After your victory over Wigan yesterday I'm expecting a tsunami of posts predicting not losing a game all season, promotion, cup glory, Man of steel awards, the onset of world peace and the ascension of Derek Beaumont to Gods right hand.

Of the small amount of Leigh fans I follow on Twitter, I've seen the yin and the yang.

On one hand, the sensible ones that realise friendlies don't really mean a lot, and that the Wigan side was far from a full strength team, whereas Leigh's was only missing one or two players. Happy with the victory, optimistic, but not getting carried away.

On the other hand, I've seen at least one thinking it's a famous victory against one of the best sides in the country and it proves that Leigh are mighty and will destroy all this season.

Every club has the crazies, and every club has the sensibles. If we managed to pull off a fluke and beat Leeds on Sunday, I'd fully expect to see similar comments from some of our fans about how we're amazing and better than the champions.

....and don't forget the ones who would think we ought to replace the Whinos in the WCC!

Missing More than 2! I'm not a crazy by the way and a few Leigh fans are stupid! But with the squad we have I really do think we will go through the season unbeaten before beating Widnes in the MPG

IT'S GROUNDHOG DAY!!!...

After last season you may have thought that they'd wind their necks in a bit. What is the point in making such predictions? You just look like a tool whatever the outcome.

Think Leigh will finish top comfortably, but will be very surprised if go through first 23 rounds undefeated. Got to play Bulls 3 times and i expect at least 1 Bulls victory. Fax seem to be on a crest of a wave and a lot of good things are going on there. They're stronger than last year. Sheffield are FT but it will take a while for their side to gel.

As it stands, Leigh are favourites to get promotion and i'd say Salford are most vulnerable IMHO

However a lot changes throughout the season. The squads will likely have changed a lot come Late July.

I don't think fax will match up to last years performances, Sheffield haven't really improved even though they have gone FT! As for yourselves i think you have missed out not getting a halfback take some pressure of Gaskell! I think my prediction is based on our improvements as well as the other teams not really improving all that much

That will do you absolutely no good whatsoever... Unbeaten, going into a comp where the intensity will be far greater!

I believe our poor form at the back end of last season put us in better shape going into the middle 8's to be honest... Ignoring the fact we lost the MPG of course but we did reach it at least.

Considering we've only lost 1 game each season for the last 2 years and how the squad has strengthened you would possibly expect us to go undefeated. However even the best teams have off days and bad days at the office and everyone will up their game against us so I doubt we'll go undefeated. As for the prediction we'll win automatic promotion, I think the team we have is Super League quality, if it's a better quality on the pitch than the bottom SL teams in 7 months time you can't really say before the season has started. Looking forward to finding out though.

To be fair, I think there are similarities between the position you're in this season coming and the one we were in at the start of last season; plenty of good players but many are new to the club and there is a fair bit of uncertainty in just how they are going to 'go'. Funnily enough, the one thing we really envied from your set up last season was the fact you had a settled side - and I still feel it was your tactics which let you down last year and not the quality of the individuals in your team.

It's going to be interesting when we hit the business end!

Any team trying to get promoted has the handicap of playing a lot of games that aren’t going to be much of a test and so it’s easy to develop bad habits that won’t be exposed by the lesser sides but will be ruthlessly targeted by the SL sides.

That was certainly the situation with us last year. It seemed to be the situation with Leigh too who started the 8s with some decent performances but didn’t manage to get any wins but by the end were pretty dismal. For us it was the same apart from vs Salford and in the MPG.

Leigh have a lot of quality on paper. How that translates onto the pitch by the 8s is going to be interesting. It’s easy to look good versus the likes of Swinton and Oldham compared with the likes of Hull KR, Widnes etc. It might be a shock when they come along after so many easy games. A decent cup run proved to be no help when it came to competing in the 8s either. Will that extra quality prove to be enough to get Leigh up? I’m not sure.

As for us we have some decent depth (apart from at halfback). I think we may be looking at recruitment later in the season and try and do a “Wakefield”. I’m not sure we have the quality we need so the key for us is Lowes ensuring we arrive at the business end with our best 17 in good shape and not fatigued from having too much rugby as was the case with the likes of at least O’Brien and Pitts last season.

That means a regular rotation of players for a change. One that’s a test of man management skills but it needs to happen.

Listening to Lowes on BBC radio Leeds it seems he's learnt from last year's mistakes as he made a point of saying he would rotate more, particularly Clough and Sidlow.

Interestingly he also said the Nielsen situation wasn't dead in the water, but due to the situation with his mum being ill, both parties said they would leave it for now and maybe pick it up later in year. 99.9 % certain we won't see Nielsen in a Bulls shirt again but you never know...

You lost 6 games in the Qualifiers.

Talking about Derek's Comments on going undefeated in The Championship.

Sure didn't look like it

Posted by roger daly on Thu Dec 31, 2015 2:14 pm
I can see Leigh going the whole season unbeaten and that includes the challenge cup



Lowtown Sparrow do you agree with my above comment from 31st December

Have I missed news about Karl Davies? Didn't play for us last year, strong rumours he won't play for us at all, but I don't think I've seen anything official? Unless I just missed it. I'm sure when someone (forget who, maybe Robbie) was talking about our prop options this year, Davies' name wasn't even mentioned.

Pretty sure he was shown the door.

And another thing, why are we only signing players with identikit names any more? it's getting as boring as snooker. We were good when we wouldn't sign a player unless he had a proper name like Vainikolo or Vaikona. And at least there is hope in snooker, with such as Thanawat Thirapongpaiboon rising in the ranks, but what have we got? "Davies", ffs.

I've heard pretty strong rumours about him retiring and/or being released, but I'm sure I've not actually seen anything official or even a slight hint from the club themselves. Don't even recall reading anything in the T&A about it, although perhaps it was a paragraph at the bottom of another article. Just seems to have dropped off the face of the planet.

No. Think every team will have the odd off day & someone will be able to catch us out if our off day coincides with their good day. Wouldn't be surprised if we go undefeated in The Championship but don't expect us to. I think the Qualifiers are too far away to make any prediction on, a lot could happen before then, we could have a bad run of injuries going into the Super 8s or a SL club could go bust and two Championship clubs could be promoted. Although I think we're SL standard this year I don't think we're top 8 SL standard so very much doubt we'll go undefeated in the Qualifiers. As for the Challenge Cup it all depends on the draw, we've made it to the Quarter Finals the last few years & put up a good game in them, I'd be very happy if we made it to the semi finals but again don't expect to yet wouldn't be utterly amazed if we did. Think to get to the final you need a lot of skill & a lot of luck not just in your own draws but in that the top teams all draw and knock each other out along the way.

Predictions
Win The Championship with ~1/2 defeats.
Put up a good close game in the Challenge Cup quarter finals, lose by less than 12.
Qualifier Super 8s can't say what's going to happen in 7 months before a competitive game has even been played.

"Released" last July. To where I don't know.

How has a Bulls thread about Nielsen been turned into a forum for Leigh fans to once again tell everybody how good they think they are?

They really are a special bunch of people.

In a very silent way by the looks of things. Odd.