What a remarkable first match of the season we saw at Wigan last Thursday night!
Played in front of an official attendance of 21,748 – the largest opening-night attendance in the history of Super League – the game was high on quality but bereft of tries.
But that didn’t detract from the quality of the entertainment, as least as far as I was concerned.
Instead, I marvelled at the players of both sides for being able to produce a game like that in the middle of February.
Both teams played a brand of tough, mistake-free rugby with the few chances to score being handled by the defence of both sides.
Wigan probably had more chances than Leigh on the night, although they were unable to convert them into tries. Perhaps the most obvious one was when Jai Field broke down the left with two players outside him, but Leigh’s Keanan Brand pulled off a decisive and brilliant tackle to shut down the threat.
The most outstanding feature of the night was the way Leigh’s new recruits fitted seamlessly into their squad, despite some of them having very little experience of first-grade action in the NRL or Super League.
I was particularly impressed by the performance of backrower Ethan O’Neill, who at the age of 25 has never made a full NRL appearance but played a great role in Leigh’s success.
The only previous game with a 1-0 scoreline that I’m aware of was a game in Round 8 of the NSWRFL Premiership competition on 12th May 1973 at the Sydney Cricket Ground, when Newtown defeated St George by that score with a field-goal by Ken Wilson.
I’ve often written that a Rugby League game containing very few errors, either in attack or defence, is likely to produce a game without tries and therefore without any obvious highlights.
How appealing would such a game be, both to established Rugby League supporters and to potential newcomers to the game.
Checking out the reaction to the game on the Totalrl.com website Rugby League forum, it was interesting to see some largely positive reactions.
“A corker for me. Never seen a 0-0 before in almost 40 years of watching the sport. I thought that if I ever saw one it would be a lower league affair played on a heavy waterlogged pitch with lots of dropped ball. But I thought that tonight was a game of incredible fitness, control and concentration. Leigh and Wigan aren’t my favourite teams but great credit to both for putting on a real spectacle,” wrote one poster.
“This game has certainly made some headlines and got the sport some publicity. The BBC sport story on it just popped up on my Facebook. It’s got 1.5k likes and 190 comments so far. An article posted around the same time about Man City has got 1.4k likes and 143 comments. A RL story with getting more attention than a football one?! I didn’t realise I’d entered a parallel universe in my sleep,” wrote another.
“Fantastic game. The standards were incredible, and for every RL fan bemoaning the lack of tries, I’ve seen tweets from newbies who were enthralled by the whole contest and the incredible fitness levels,” wrote a third poster.
So perhaps we worry too much.
There’s no doubt that the golden-point victory for Leigh was thrilling, even though we had to wait for golden-point to begin, but I would still prefer to have the draw with both sides getting one point.
This article is taken from Martyn Sadler’s ‘Talking Rugby League’ column in this week’s edition of League Express.
