Adrian Lam has assessed Leigh Leopards’ home defeat to Wakefield Trinity that’s seen them miss out on the chance at a home play-off game against the same opponents.
Leigh needed to win by 28 points or more to jump to fourth and in turn host Wakefield next Friday in the play-off eliminators, however, they lost 19-8 in a performance that Lam felt was uncharacteristic of the Leopards’ recent form.
Speaking in his post-match presser, Lam explained his frustrations lie with the performance as opposed to missing out on the home play-off game, as he stated: “We wanted a better performance than that, obviously. I felt pretty frustrated watching the game, it didn’t get too many heights in the sense of how we wanted to play. I didn’t see that at all.
“There was too many stop-starts. I think the penalty count was ten to four or five and I just thought it was too many penalties that were uncharacteristic of the last three months of rugby.
“For the first 25 to 30 minutes, all we did was defend and I didn’t think we were that type of team to be that ill-disciplined. I’m very frustrated with that side of things.”
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Despite being on the wrong end of the penalty count through their own ill-discipline, Leigh did manage to dominate in terms of line breaks and they were still in with a shot for the majority of the game.
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That’s something the Leigh boss took pleasure in, explaining: “I felt that even though we were miles away, we still had a chance to win the game with ten minutes to go, so we’ll hold onto that.”
The Leopards were without leader Isaac Liu for the match, meaning Nathan Wilde featured in a first Super League match of the year, but Lam was able to allay any injury concerns as he confirmed that Liu’s absence was on account of his wife’s pregnancy.
He said: “His wife and family are just in hospital delivering the baby as we speak. I’m not sure if the baby has come through yet but I hope baby and mum are healthy and well. That’s just part of life.
“It’s probably not a bad thing that we can get him back next week because he is one of our leaders. We had to make a call on him, we gave him up until 6 o’clock to be ready but it didn’t happen.”
As such, Liu will return next week and he’ll be needed as the club are fearing that Robbie Mulhern, who will leave to join Castleford Tigers, will be done for the play-offs.
Lam confirmed: “We’re pretty sure that he’s done his calf. We’ll know a little bit more on Monday but it didn’t look good.
“He’s had that same injury for the last two years, on and off, so that might be his season.
“Isaac Liu will come back next week. I think Jack Ashworth will be a chance, Keanan Brand will be a chance of coming back.”
