I reckon without Leigh knocking on 3 times in our own ten (all led to Quins tries) and Gorsky dropping the ball when two on one a few yards out, you really would have been looking for positives. Mr 'Halibut' was quite whistle happy and did not let the game flow. The comment above re beating Salford, they had seven or eight players missing. How many did you have missing?

1,6 and 3 were your quality.
Your pack was well beaten.
The ref gave you more than a shot, for the first 25 mins he piggy backed you every time we had you in the 20m. This gave you a 24-6 lead due to your forwards doing no hard work. Leigh got some ball late on and broke you at ease.
Score was very flattering to Quins.
Pryce was garbage

In a nut shell that Maur. In a nut shell.

We should hammer shoddy sides like Leigh to be honest. Could be a long season for us.

I'd agree , off today's showing , you will struggle IMO

b0ll0x.....Teams like Leigh should be getting spanked by our academy side FFS.


And why oh why do we insist on pre season friendlies against oposition from the lower leagues? Another season is about to begin and yet again, Quins RL look to be going into it under prepared....no disrespect to Leigh....but surely a game against a SL team should have been arranged. I think we are the only SL team not to have a proper warm up (Again) and the first 2 games of the season are "must wins"...

Don't know about Melling but Bailey's wife is expecting this weekend and fine and Ward broke his nose in the Capital Challenge

Agree.

Teams only really get going in April/May. Pre-seasons are about fitness and shaking off the cobwebs. Conversely, if you spank every opposition during the pre-season you go into a new campaign with overbloated optimism. I reckon you'll go into the start of this campaign as massive underdogs in every match - and at the start of the season that'll be your strength - a chance to pull off a few shocks early doors against unprepared and over confident teams.

Not really no , the Championship is a much higher level than the SL academy

You probably wanted to play us for the same reason Wire and Salford did , to guarantee a fixture

Point taken that the nice undersoil heating at Leigh was a key consideration when arranging a fixture, but given that we tonked the Skolars (who got tonked by Wigans U20's BTW) and then struggled to beat a leigh team, that by all accounts will be very competative in the Championship this year but were hammered by Wire, we are going into the season with very little preperation IMO.
Catalans and Crusaders will be targetting our games as "must wins"....both have had run outs against SL opposition....and if we lose both of these games, I fear for us in 2011....

I think that's about right given the fiasco last year with Wrexham Crusaders who couldn't be bothered to fulfil commitments blaming it on their snow phobia or Nobby's TV commitments. Leigh was guaranteed due to a) Their commitment and b) undersoil heating

The Wire game was a Lot tighter than the scoreline suggested , Tony Smith stated as such , and it was no false praise , they had to work very hard and it was only down to some real quality and a full strength squad that the margin was so big , they will beat several SL teams by bigger scores this year , most probably Quins being one of them

...I fear you may be correct.

not too sure what to take away from this result
Looking at the leigh site, they are pretty confident of having a decent season and being up there challenging, and they have to be in with a shout of a franchise place.
Not convinced we have to play SL team before we go in to the season!! as long as the boys get a run out to blow away the cobwebs and get some proper contact rugby in

I predict a win against the Cats
And another win against the cheshire crusaders if we stop sammut

Defence was my concern post the Skolars game- nothing has changed my mind reading the comments from yesterday

AFAIK, we were missing Ward, Bailey, Purdo, Melling, Temata and Caro yesterday so we should not panic. Leigh had already played 2 SL teams and were fit and ready. It may take time to get the loanees up to speed. Clubby seems to have retained his England and acquired goal kicking boots and there was praise for Gale, if those two have a good season we will not do too badly. We do need a prop and a defensive coach it would seem!

This was a friendly ffs. Neither team will be playing at full tilt so let's just all calm down shall we.

Leigh fans are telling us nothing we don't already know by proclaiming we'll struggle this year. As littlerich above states, our biggest asset will be our underdog status and we have the opportunity to start well with two of the weaker sides in the first two rounds.

No chance this time around - we didn't qualify, to apply. As yet nobody knows if Championship clubs can apply in 2015 - I expect the Rfl will announce something in 2014!!

Look on the bright side Dave. YOU can't get relegated!!

I agree its pre season but what I saw with my own eyes verses Skolars with regards to defence worried me. We were opened up by Skolars a good number of times, more than I had seen in previous capital games. The score yesterday would suggest there are grounds to be worried. For the record I don’t think we will be at the top of the league but at the same time defending the goal line is an important facet of the game.

You appear to play down pre season games as being completely insignificant.

That's an interesting interpretation of my post.

My own position is that you cannot judge how a season is going to go based on two pre-season games, particularly one against London Skolars that is used every year primarily as a marketing tool. I understand that people are excited about the season starting and want to get as much information as they can from people who watched the games but drawing concrete conclusions from them is a risky business.

I agree about the question marks over our defence - Lord knows we've gone through it enough on here - But lets give the team, with new faces and a new coach, enough time to get up and running in SL before judging them either way. Fans expectations need to be managed because we've undoubtedly got one of the weaker squads in SL.

If there are question marks about the defence it's up to Powell to sort them out. Clearly he would have noted what happened at the Skolars' match and this will have be re-iterated to him against Leigh. He now has two weeks to address the defensive frailities.

I don't know how big the lads are that you have still to come back but you were missing some size yesterday. A couple to soften us up in the middle and it could have been a totaly different score. Anyway all the best for the season.

Go to Blip.tv and type in Leigh Centurions v Harlequins' watch the game and make your own mind up.