{"id":547940,"date":"2026-04-24T08:35:26","date_gmt":"2026-04-24T08:35:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/547940\/"},"modified":"2026-04-24T08:35:26","modified_gmt":"2026-04-24T08:35:26","slug":"andrew-henderson-arrival-key-to-leigh-leopards-future-says-boss-as-josh-charnley-hailed-ahead-of-milestone-appearance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/547940\/","title":{"rendered":"Andrew Henderson arrival key to Leigh Leopards’ future says boss as Josh Charnley hailed ahead of milestone appearance"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Leigh\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

Leigh Leopards boss Adrian Lam is looking forward to working with the club\u2019s new Director of Rugby, Andrew Henderson, after his appointment was confirmed earlier today.<\/p>\n

Henderson has departed fellow Super League club, York Knights, to join the Leopards, and his appointment puts an end to a near 12-month search conducted by the club following the exit of Chris Chester.<\/p>\n

Chester left the club in late April last year to join Castleford Tigers, and Henderson\u2019s arrival now means that Lam has someone to work alongside and someone that can \u201ctake the pressure off\u201d him in certain scenarions.<\/p>\n

Lam spoke to the press today [Wednesday] to discuss the club\u2019s home tie with Huddersfield Giants tomorrow, and was asked about the former London Broncos boss\u2019 arrival at the club.<\/p>\n

He said: \u201c[I\u2019m] obviously very pleased for him, myself and the club as well.\u00a0He\u2019s another body around here to get on with what\u2019s next within the club and just to help\u00a0with all areas really.<\/p>\n

\u201c[He\u2019s a] great person, and I think he\u2019ll do a great job here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Revealing what Henderson\u2019s jobs will entail, the Leopards boss added: \u201cYeah, I think he\u2019ll have a part to play with both the board and Neil [Jukes, CEO] and Derek [Beaumont, owner] but also\u00a0myself.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that\u2019s the big key one for me is just to take some pressure off certain areas.\u00a0That certainly helps me focus on the rugby side of things and I think he\u2019s been around\u00a0a long time.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe has a great rapport with every club and the RFL and players as well. He\u2019s been a coach himself so he understands the system.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s just got to slide straight\u00a0in here really and get to work quickly. We\u2019ve all been looking forward to that and he\u2019s been here this week and he\u2019s already\u00a0digging his heels in and getting involved so we\u2019re pretty excited.\u201d<\/p>\n

Leigh Leopards boss hails veteran winger ahead of milestone appearance<\/p>\n

Leigh have another reason to celebrate this week, as winger Josh Charnley prepares to take to the field for his 400th career game.<\/p>\n

The game will also mark Charnley\u2019s 99th for the club, after the former Wigan and Warrington man joined the side in their Championship promotion-winning season back in 2022.<\/p>\n

Sc0ring 70 tries in those 98 matches so far, the 11-time England international has been a standout in Leigh\u2019s rise to Super League success, and Lam hopes that his milestone match will give the side more motivation to get over the line this week.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe made an announcement today and acknowledged the achievement for Josh, it\u2019s incredible,\u201d the Leigh boss said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt doesn\u2019t happen too often when someone of a player like his calibre gets to that\u00a0honour and we certainly embraced that this morning in the team meeting.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s his 99th\u00a0game for us as well with Leigh and 100th game next week for us so that\u2019s pretty special\u00a0too and just having some of his mates make comments and his family, it was an emotional\u00a0time for everyone in the room and one of the greats of the game really.<\/p>\n

Lam went as far to say that Charnley was a \u201clegend\u201d of the game, something you can\u2019t really argue with given he has scored the second-most tries in Super League history, and by the time his career is over he could well take top spot.<\/p>\n

The boss continued: \u201cWhen you look at\u00a0also the tries scored, I think he\u2019s averaged around 323 tries roughly around that too,\u00a0that\u2019s averaging quite high in the professional sport.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn top of all that, he\u2019s a great\u00a0athlete but he\u2019s also a great person, just his presence, he\u2019s a fan\u2019s favourite, he\u2019s\u00a0always smiling, he\u2019s never down, never grumpy, he\u2019s just a person that we love having around\u00a0the club and we\u2019re grateful that he gets to spend that moment in our hands really as\u00a0a club, he\u2019s a legend and we love him.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know the fans love him too so hopefully we\u2019ll make\u00a0a special night for him and an extra reason to win tomorrow night.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Leigh Leopards boss Adrian Lam is looking forward to working with the club\u2019s new Director of Rugby, Andrew…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":547941,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5903,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-547940","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-rugby","8":"tag-rugby","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547940","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=547940"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547940\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/547941"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=547940"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=547940"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=547940"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}