Since losing to Warrington in successive weeks in April in Super League and the Challenge Cup, the Leopards had won 10 out of 12 games, including victory over the Wire at Magic Weekend three weeks ago and they were out of the traps strongly.<\/p>\n
Lam’s pass found Armstrong hitting the line well from full-back as he sold a dummy and found a gap to the tryline.<\/p>\n
The scrum-half was then the recipient of fine play, supporting Umyla Hanley after he had broken through the defence to run under the posts.<\/p>\n
The Wolves got themselves on the scoreboard thanks to the might of Sipley as three defenders could not keep out the Niue prop at close range.<\/p>\n
However, Leigh made it a two-score game again right on half-time as Senior finished off in the left corner after more good work in the line from the half-backs.<\/p>\n
The second period saw no quarter given and both sides lost a player to the sin-bin in the early stages. Super League’s record try scorer Josh Charnley was penalised for head contact on Toby King, while Warrington scrum-half Leon Hayes joined him for a dangerous tackle on Owen Trout.<\/p>\n
And with emotions running high, Ofahengaue profited as sheer brute force saw him force his way over.<\/p>\n
Moments later, the contest was settled as Hanley scored a try that legendary father Ellery would have been proud of as a combination of strength, footwork and handling skills took him past a clutch of defenders in a small space.<\/p>\n
With their defence relishing the battle, it was a good tune-up for the visit of neighbours Wigan Warriors on Friday (20:00).<\/p>\n
Hopoate’s try came too late in this one to make any difference for Warrington and they will have to regroup ahead of their trip to Castleford Tigers the following day to regain momentum in the play-off battle.<\/p>\n
Leigh Leopards head coach Adrian Lam said:<\/p>\n
“I’m happy. Just relieved in a sense, especially second half where we had a few injuries, it could have been really tight – they had the majority of the ball – but we defended really well at times and the way we hung in there as a group was inspirational.<\/p>\n
“The second half, we had to play within [ourselves], I saw the boys were gassed and with only two subs, it was going to be a tough 40 minutes but the players were unbelievably good. <\/p>\n
“We were really physical. They were fired up at the start of the game but once it settled down, some of our rugby was as good as we’ve played this season.”<\/p>\n
Warrington Wolves head coach Sam Burgess told Sky Sports:<\/p>\n
“It is one of those games. I thought the scoreline probably didn’t reflect the game or how tight the game was.<\/p>\n
“In that second half I thought we started with great spirit. We just couldn’t get any points.” <\/p>\n
Leigh: Armstrong; Senior, Hughes, Hanley, Charnley; Cook, Lam; Ofahengaue, Horne, Liu, Halton, Trout, Brogan.<\/p>\n
Interchanges: Vaalepu, Davis, Brown, Ipape.<\/p>\n
Sin-bin: Charnley (49)<\/p>\n
Warrington: Webster; Hopoate, Smith, King, Ashton; Irwin, Hayes; Byrne, Walker, Thomas, Holroyd, Harrison, Currie.<\/p>\n
Interchanges: Sipley, Crowther, Philbin, Bentley.<\/p>\n
Sin-bin: Hayes (52)<\/p>\n
Referee: Marcus Griffiths.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Since losing to Warrington in successive weeks in April in Super League and the Challenge Cup, the Leopards…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":711490,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-711489","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/711489","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=711489"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/711489\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/711490"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=711489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=711489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=711489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}