Leigh Centurions 34

Oldham 12

IN just 80 minutes Ian Millward saw both sides of the Centurions' make-up. For the best part of an hour the Hilton Park crowd purred with satisfaction as Millward's new-look side systematically took Oldham apart.

Then they spent the final 20 minutes in almost stunned silence as Leigh fell to pieces.

Six smashing first half tries and a seventh early in the second half saw Leigh running away with it at 34-0.

Then Oldham could hardly believe their luck. Leigh's match plan went out of the window, errors began to litter their game and they made a poor Oldham side look half decent.

Coach Millward gave his squad the hard word immediately after the game complaining they had 'lost their credibility' in front of the public.

"In our two trial games we've had three good halves but today's fourth was a shocker and will have done nothing to help us win some credibility back in the town," he said. "To say I'm not happy with the second half performance is an understatement. At 34-0 I was well satisfied but then for some reason we dropped off the game both in attack and defence. There was a bug out there in the second half . . . and we caught it!

"I think the major problem is that the boys got a bit comfortable with the 34-0 scoreline, they thought they'd done the job. There's a lesson to be learned."

Although the final quarter did take the gloss off things, there was much to admire in the first hour.

The midfield combination of Saf Patel, Craig Dean and Anthony Murray looks top quality and can only improve with time. Alan Hadcroft had another big game on Leigh's left and Andy Fairclough has probably won himself a place in next week's starting line-up.

New Aussie signing Heath Cruickshank was given a couple of short bursts off the bench and will obviously benefit from a week's work with the squad. Leigh set off like a house on fire and had two tries on the board inside 11 minutes; Murray sending winger David Ingram over for the first of his two and then Stuart Donlan steaming under the posts after Fairclough had split Oldham wide open. Dean kicked the first of three goals and Leigh were 10-0 ahead.

Oozing confidence, Leigh really let rip and before half time they had rattled up four more tries.

Murray cashed in on good approach work by Street and Donlan; Murray repaid the compliment for Street; Bowker and Dean opened the way for Ingram's second and a diagonal run by Cruickshank helped Kieron Purtill muscle his way over at the corner for a 28-0 half time lead.

There was no indication of the problems that followed when Dean and Patel linked to get Fairclough over for another six pointer at the start of the second half.

But inexplicably Leigh lost their shape and pattern as Oldham upped their game. Big-money signing Gary Coulter and a trialist back rower collected a try apiece, both coming from Leigh errors.

Yet despite a poor final quarter you'd have got pretty long odds on Leigh coming through their trial games unbeaten.

LEIGH: Donlan; Kendrick, Hadcroft, Purtill, Ingram; Patel, Dean; Street, Murray, Whittle, Costello, Liku, Fairclough.

Subs (all used):Cruickshank, Smith, Jenkins, Bowker, Arkwright, Dickinson, Norman. Attendance: 1284.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.