The gap is wider and last year Wakefield were by far the weakest team which gave championship teams some hope.

Whatever happens in the middle 8s a Championship team will be in the MPG,hopefully it will be Leigh, the question is Can they compete?At the moment the answer is NO.However they can improve between now and the middle 8s so there is hope.

Get to the MPG and anything can happen in a one off game, too many times the underdogs have won in finals and this is basically a Final game with a massive prize.
The key is getting the everyone to peak at the right time and early May is not the right time, re our defence I think every team I have seen this year has forgotten how to defend properly, have you watched SL this season, games with 20 plus points scored against you and still winning is the norm.

The Watcher believes that Finnigan was the mole leaking info out of the club & when he was identified he was dispatched.

I think the mole left a few weeks prior to Finny....

If true that is shocking after what the club/Derek did for him.

Just watched the game again on Centurion TV.

I was right for once. We should be better than that.

Did we still win? If not a disaster.

Did we have two moles then ? Also with the current bottom four in S/L,no championship team will make the mpg imo...

Well at least one Championship team HAS to make the MPG unless one of them finishes in the top 3 and goes up automatically (unlikely!).

Even if Leeds, Hudds, Salford and HKR take the top 4 spots then whichever Championship side finishes 5th will be in the MPG and get a one off shot at promotion.

Being wholly negative, I don't think the gap between SL and Champs is wider than last season.

I think the standard seems to have dropped across both leagues.

The gap is much wider.

Do you want to rethink the last bit?

If one finishes in the top three his statement could be correct

Based off what? Last year we beat Salford and the gap was closer, this year Oldham beat Hull KR away and the gap got wider??????

Leigh fans are assuming the gaps got wider because we are perceived to be not playing as well as last year... id say the gaps probably the same as it was last August as a bench mark.

The guide for us Leigh fans, is this time last year we had to maintain current standards to get promoted, ultimatetly we couldnt sustain that . This year we have to improve; can we improve? Almost certainly we can, the question is will we!

Which is what will happen....

Based on my observations.

To take this further...

Last season we be Salford, Wakey and almost Warrington.

I, for one, took great heart that this would stand us in good stead for the Middle 8's, but when that fell apart it was obvious that, despite what our esrtwhile naysayers had been telling us, that all three of those teams had been severely under-strength when we'd played them.

In fact, looking at this season, injuries really do seem to be playing a major factor in all leagues and then it really does come down to squad depth.

To sound like a broken record, it seems obvious that when we play rugby we could indeed destroy teams in this league, then everyone would be happy and then we could go and get trounced in the 8's again.

But then again our problems weren't that we weren't up to SL standard, its that we couldn't even beat our Champsionship rivals.

I suppose the bit of optimism I'm working on is that we aren't yet "showing our full hand."

To do well in the middle 8s ,we need to beat all the Championship Clubs in there, can we?Of course we can , but will we?I'm not so sure, the 4 Clubs from SL in the middle 8s will be formidable sides and if Leeds and Hudds are there it will be very difficult,I keep hearing how we will be OK when all our injuries clear up, but who will drop out to accommodate the returning players?Again some are saying we are NOT playing to our full capabilites, which is very true,we all know we can play much better, but we must start to do that soo , to put a marker down to the other teams.

Beat the Championship clubs and pick off the SL club on the slide means T3. We should not get the terrible draw we had last year in 3 x SL clubs to open with and 3 home games on Sat 3pm.

I feel we will do it, with a fit roster and a large and vocal support

I would be surprised if we got promoted. Decent pack but our backline is so slow without McNally and Brierley.

Saying that, we will probably do well as we do not have the expectation of last season

Just watched Centurions TV Chatback.

The lads think we will have a tough game against Oldham a week Sunday so what must they think of our chances in the middle 8's.

We need to improve significantly and I think a week off for our players will help.

Like every other Leyther I am hoping our team kick on and improve their performance significantly in the next few weeks.

Right nowt left to supp so am off to bed.

Touching on what was posted earlier in the thread does anyone think we are not showing our hand (so to speak)?.All coaches review opponents games/videos prior to playing them and lets be honest we haven't exactly been in sparkling form have we. Are we deliberately just doing enough to scrape a win. Myself i think not as in my opinion it's to risky because we wont know if we can play a higher standard under pressure until we consistently try too then do our own reviews on what was good / bad & needs adjustment. Also what is it with injuries this season, not just us & not just our league.

Quite. I think we aren't showing our full hand and this could see us come a cropper in our next 3 fixtures, so maybe now is the time to pick it up.

And maybe we will, if that is the tactic.

Think it's clear that the gap between the leagues is bigger this year, if only mostly because Wakefield have improved so much & us & Bradford aren't comprehensively sweeping away all before us. However all hope is not lost. We've seen how well we can play, if only in 10/15 min spells, if we can play like that for the full 80 we'll stand a very good chance. It's looking likely that the £1,000,000 game is how it needs to be done, to get there all we have to do is beat all the championship teams, we can do that as we're top of the league (think we'll need to stay there though, with London chasing us 1st gives you a big advantage in not having to travel down to London).