As a formality I’ll open this post.
I don’t fancy us for this one. Hats off to them they’ve gone for it. Let’s say we’ll have to play very well and they’ll have to rest more than a few for this to be a competitive game. Having said that a total spanking will undo some of the good work Eccles has done so I hope they can give Leigh someth8ng to think about (as opposed to racking up 60 odd).
Long old trip to Sarf London for this one. I’ll have to have a good old think. Think my hair could do with a cut and that car isn’t going to get cleaned by itself.

This is exactly the type of Game that Hughes expects die hard fans to get behind........an absolute tonking by a side that a few years ago we'd have swept aside as an afterthought........BRAVE NEW DAWN my 'arris...I sincerely hope they bring 10 coachloads down and give as a 2k gate, so Hughes and Loubser can tell us how wonderful Wimbledon is.

Yep, this is the sort of game that will show where we are as a club. If we want to be getting 5,000 fans then we need to be fighting for promotion and winning against teams like this at home.

Or at least putting up a decent fight. Not simply rolling over which is what I fear will happen on Sunday.

Let's see what happens but the foot seems to have gone off the gas since safety was ensured.

whats worse is I expect Leigh to rest a few, but still score 50+ on us

It’s not nice to see but a lot of hard work went in to keeping us up, once you’re safe the mentality will change for sure. The players wouldn’t be human otherwise.
I hope the players play for pride, put up a good fight for us fans in the last two home games..Give us a lift at the end of what has been a long hard season to watch ( mostly).
Actually make next season something to look forward to, not to dread.

As great as the Cake man has been, & I'm pretty sure we would have been relegated under Mustard, I still think we need a good experienced Head Coach to move forward. But as we all know, appointments are not Dave's strong suit.

Neither is decision making. What is his strong suit ? Just the cash, I guess.

Is Dixon still on their books. Not sure- he was at the Cup Final.If he plays I bet he causes problems.

If you’ve got to have a strong suit, making loads of cash is a great one to have! Agreed though this year’ planning and decision making has been all over the place...like a cheap suit.

David Hughes is a medium sized fish in a very small pond ...the talent he does have is the ability to make very good money with a minimal amount of work, a scenario he has been in now for over 30 years. Luckily for him, his industry is insulated against most external factors....in fact, he's probably in a better position now with Ukraine and all the other stuff going on.
He lacks business acumen. He has no concept of revenue generation other than buying something for A and selling it for A+15% and he believes that it is the public's fault for not wanting to watch Rugby League...and it's now the fault of lapsed fans for not flocking to yet another white elephant if a ground.
He has lost 4,000 fans off the gate and he rewards the remaining few hundred by cutting the funding for the team?
He's the problem.....he wasn't always, but he assuredly is now.

No, he was barely given a chance. After one bad game where he dropped a couple of kicks near the corner and the opposition scored, we signed Krisnan Inu and he hasn't played for us since. Been loaned out to Rochdale & Widnes, but (thanks google) has only played 9 games this season in total (for all 3 clubs). Tough game for us on Sunday, hopefully a Leigh win, I'll go for London 16 Leigh 30.

You don't like Hughes.....



.....everyone sussed that and heard you the first million or so times. This thread, was bravely introduced by Big Time and. IBRC, was about the visit of Leigh. Let's maybe screw back onto that thread.

Dixon is not in the Leigh 21:

1. Caleb Aekins
3. Keanan Brand
4. Nene Macdonald
5. Tom Nisbet
7. Joe Mellor
8. Adam Sidlow
9. Aaron Smith
10. Mark Ioane
11. Joe Wardle
12. Sam Stone
13. Tom Amone
16. Ed Chamberlain
17. Jacob Jones
18. John Asiata
21. Edwin Ipape
23. Krisnan Inu
24. Kai O’Donnell
25. Ben Nakubuwai
26. Blake Ferguson
27. Josh Charnley
30. Lachlan Lam

Can't see Dixon ever playing for Leigh again - or at least not this season!

Nor is it likely that Leigh will nil you by 64 this time, London are a much improved team and it may well be the visitors that ease their foot (feet?) off the gas. Who knows?

It may, or may not interest Londoners to know that Leigh’s first ever game under floodlights was at the White City Stadium in 1934. The home side, London Highfield won 25-8.

Some toff had seen an RL match and decided to buy a northern club and transfer them lock, stock and barrel to London. He also agreed to pay visiting teams’ expenses - shades of the now defunct Toronto there (furthermore he was Canadian!)

6,000 opening gate, later 10,500 in a warm-up for the Ozzies’ tour. The club made a loss in its only season and moved back up north.

There is one thing about this cautionary tale of RL expansionism that will vindicate Dead Cowboys’ grouses; London Highfield played in royal blue jerseys with yellow hoops! A certain late Londoner, Amy Winehouse, would be thinking, “Back to Black”.

It would be insincere to wish you luck this coming weekend. The pressure is off you, all the pressure is on the Shield winners for the idiotic play-offs.

May the best team win!

Cheers Budgie. He is(was?) an X factor player, slightly lightweight in defence sometimes but a definite asset. I think he moved(back) North for personal rather than work related reasons and it doesn’t seem to have worked out (on the pitch). I’d be happy to have him back but who knows.
Your estimate of the result is a little kind to us. You have a very fine side this year. I assume you’ll rest a few and the it depends where our team’s collective head is at. I hope we put a few on the score sheet but suspect you’ll get into the high 30s- mid 40s. All the best.

Crikey that’s not a bad squad there Bongser. I think the result is a foregone conclusion but I hope that London give it a go and create some opportunities. Season in slight danger of fizzling out for us. For you I suspect it’s about avoiding injuries and just keeping ticking over and not losing focus. Play offs seem a long way away for Broncos at present but you never know.

O/T

Big Time, you interacted with Budge earlier and it summoned something from Bongser's fevered memory palace:

BT ran a series of adverts back in the 70s/80s with a muscly budgie called Buzby(?)

Cheers BT & Budge, Bongser just reclaimed a little of his life!

Voiced by Bernard Cribbins IIRC.

Dixon was up for a 12 game ban for using unacceptable language (grade f) not sure what happened.

That won’t help. I was always pleased to see him in our team ....except when he occasionally did that step hard to the right as the attacker brushes past his left shoulder and over the line to score move.
I also thought he seemed a good guy off the pitch so I hope if he does pick up a ban it’s not too long.

His defence is indefensible - Leigh have signed well since but that first factor weighed heavily against him.

Regarding your last line, yeah, was impressed by seeing him, when on loan at Rochdale, in the Leigh dressing room after a win (in a Centurions outer coat whilst that night's players were in varying amounts of game kit) banging the empty Eski cum cajon to lead the victory song. If he has two brain cells to rub together, he must have known he'd played his last game for us but he was still one of the lads when amongst his squadmates.

Is "squadmate" a word? It is now!

It doesn’t look like the foot is coming off the gas:

Aekins
Ferguson
Chamberlain
MacDonald
Inu
Lam
Mellor
Sidlow
Smith
Amone
Wardle
Stone
O’Donnell

Ipape
Charnley
Ioane
Nakubuwei

33/1 Broncos to win. Worth a punt? I've only seen Leigh once and they lost. 1/500 Leigh to win mind!

Well beaten. Shows how far we are from where we need to be.

Based on the ones around me, if there was a championship for whinging fans, Leigh would take that comfortably too.

Some observations from me.
Leigh’s interchange bench is dynamite.
Their back room staff is significant in number they really must have a few quid knocking about. Was that Gary Megson ex WBA manager as a water carrier?
Leigh were metaphorically a different class but I thought Broncos worked hard.
A bit unlucky to have a try knocked off and had a decent 15 minutes in the first half but that was probably about it.
Boy does Inu take a long time to take even the simplest of kicks,
We only had one drop out today and, to sighs around the ground, Leyland did his 15 metres short kick offf.....and it worked and we got up the other end of the park before gifting Ferguson with a break away interception try.
Walker takes the kick offs. He is perilously close to hitting it too long most times- can’t win can you!
Parata had his least effective game Leigh very effective down the middle.
As to Leigh’s fans seems Ok to me but I do question quite why fans are so inter- mingled it is a recipe for disaster. I’m. Sure they could have allocated Leigh a stand. Maybe it was just too much hassle.