2003 Season Reports: LEIGH 38 CHORLEY 20

LEIGH 38 CHORLEY 20

By Dave Parkinson
It was comfortable but it could and should have been better.

The Centurions made it 3 wins from 4 games with victory over Chorley but the manner of victory was far from convincing, especially a scrappy second half that saw a spirited Lynx outscore Leigh by 14-10.

Despite the victory Paul Terzis was far from happy at an abject defensive performance from his troops - keeping his players in the dressing room for around 20 minutes after the full-time whistle.


"I'm not going to concern myself with our attack. What we spoke about at half-time was our defence and our defence wasn't acceptable. We have addressed it at the end of the game with a bit of talk, but talk is cheap. We are going to really focus hard on our defence. While the most important part is to win games we've got to work harder and harder on our defence and make sure it's right because over the past three weeks we've let in 28 points, 20 points and 10 points and it isn't acceptable.

"There were some very soft tries scored against soft defensive options. I don't care if we make mistakes in attack, that's what we are all about we like scoring tries and we are going to make errors but its how you respond to those things and it wasn't acceptable defensively. It's not the standards that we set ourselves, especially on our work ethic and what we are doing in training."

"You've got to give a bit of credit to Chorley, they kept coming at us and made us pay the price. They should have possibly come up with a couple more tries. I don't think we were ever in danger of losing the game but again with the standards we set ourselves defensively, we certainly let ourselves down."

For the opening 20 minutes Leigh looked set to rack up the points as tries from Leroy Rivett, Dale Cardoza and Paul Rowley established a 16-0 advantantage. Cardoza's was the pick of the bunch when halfbacks John Duffy and Pat Weisner linked to put the centre in space and he blasted away from Mick Redford to score from 55 metres. Simon Smith barged over for Chorley as Leigh rested on their laurels but further tries from John Duffy and Willie Swann saw Leigh establish a 28-6 half-time lead.

Tries in the opening 16 minutes from Rivett and Bryan Henare continued the scoring vein before Leigh seemingly declared at 38-6. To be fair the Centurions suffered injury disruption, Sonny Nickle left the field and top forward Sean Richardson also had a spell on the sideline. While the Centurions laboured on, Chorley decided to take the game to the home side. Former Leigh legend Tim Street played a great role in the Lynx fightback, scoring a try and offloading for fun in a last quarter that saw Mike Briggs and Marlon Miller also get on the scoreboard.

Man-of-the-Match: Sean Richardson was a tower of strength and the back-row of him, Bryan Henare and Adam Bristow is starting to look useful.

Tries: Rivett (2), Cardoza, Swann, Duffy, Henare, Rowley
Goals: Duffy 5/6, Sanderson 0/1.

Team: Watts, Rivett, Munro, Cardoza, Hadcroft; Weisner, Duffy; Nickle, Rowley, Ball, Richardson, Henare, Bristow; Swann, Sanderson, Hamilton, Holdstock.

Attendance: 1,871.