Talking Rugby League: Leigh Leopards gave Wembley a sporting miracle

A couple of years ago, you might have thought you had more chance of spotting a UFO than of seeing Leigh at Wembley.

Leigh had been a club in the doldrums for a long time, the little brother just down the road from Wigan.

Even when they were bought by Derek Beaumont, a local lad made good, no one, apart from Derek himself, really thought that he could revive the club’s fortunes. The good times for Leigh were thought by most people to lie firmly in the past.

Some people within the game took great delight in scoffing at Derek, particularly when Leigh enjoyed one-off seasons in Super League in 2017 and 2021 and were immediately relegated on both occasions.

So when they were back in Super League at the start of this season, there were plenty of cynics who anticipated the third instalment of the Leigh relegation saga.

The re-branding of Leigh RLFC, from the Centurions to the Leopards, combined with their promotion to Super League, was always going to be one of the biggest stories of the year for Rugby League supporters.

But I’m not sure that anyone connected with the club, especially their supporters, could have imagined just how big the story would become.

All they needed was a win at Wembley on Saturday to confirm that a miracle actually has happened.

And it could hardly have happened in a more amazing way.

On 66 minutes they took a 16-10 lead through Tom Briscoe’s converted try in the right corner in front of their own supporters, who must have started believing at that point that the game was going their way.

But when the Robins scored with a minute to go, with a try from Matt Parcell that was examined forensically by video-referee Liam Moore, who was prepared, as he made clear, to take all the time in the world (and he nearly did) to reach the correct decision, then their semi-final field-goal hero Brad Schneider was up to the task of converting the try to take the game into golden-point time.

With Schneider’s recent record of scoring late field-goals to win matches, I would guess that the odds must have moved sharply in favour of Hull KR at that point.

But the Leopards had their own field-goal hero in Gareth O’Brien, whose effort famously rescued Salford in 2016 against Hull KR in the Million Pound Game. Could history repeat itself?

Well, as it turned out, no it couldn’t. After Schneider’s disastrous failure to kick a penalty (which was dubious, at best) into touch, O’Brien had the first opportunity, but his attempt drifted narrowly wide.

Schneider was forced to try from too far out before Lam got the chance off the back of a surging run by Robbie Mulhern into the heart of the Robins’ defence.

He made no mistake in landing the first field-goal of his career.

It’s hard to imagine that he’ll ever land a more important one. It was the crucial thing that won the Cup and won him the Lance Todd Trophy and

Earlier in the day, St Helens had made history by winning the first Women’s Challenge Cup Final to be played at Wembley.

Tara Jones made her own little piece of history by scoring the first try of the game for St Helens and Jodie Cunningham was voted the player of the match.

Caitlin Beevers of Leeds scored the finest individual try of any of the three major matches that were held at Wembley on Saturday

But the most remarkable try of the day was left until the very end of the last game, when Batley were 12-6 down in the 1895 Cup Final and were battling desperately to get back on terms with seconds to go. Somehow, they kept the ball alive interminably and Elliot Kear got over for the try.

After a try like that, it would have been poetic justice for Luke Hooley to add the conversion to send us into golden-point time again.

But his kick drifted just narrowly past the upright and Halifax survived to win the game.

UFOs don’t turn up twice in one day after all.