Leigh Leopards’ biggest flaw exposed in underwhelming Salford Red Devils win
Leigh Leopards celebrate a try in their win over Salford Red Devils in Round 23 of the 2025 Super League season
Leigh Leopards’ biggest flaw was on show in Friday night’s underwhelming win over financially-stricken Salford Red Devils: their depth.
The Leopards have carried players with minor injuries for a few weeks, and utilised the clash against Salford to give some of those stars a much-needed rest.
Having lost back-to-back games against Leeds Rhinos and Hull FC, this was a chance for some of their fringe players to make an impact and stake their claim to be involved in the closing stages of the campaign heading into the play-offs.
The game itself was a shoe-in on paper: going up against a Salford side cobbled together and made up of loans and youngsters in the most part.
In the end, the Leopards got their win, but not many did themselves any favours in a performance which left a lot to be desired.
Leigh Leopards’ biggest flaw exposed in underwhelming Salford Red Devils win
Leigh’s depth has been something they’ve openly tried to improve upon year-on-year since returning to Super League.
It’s arguably the best it’s been in that period, but Friday night showed that it’s still not where it needs to be for where the club wants to get to in Super League.
Head coach Adrian Lam made six changes to his 17 from last weekend’s loss at Hull, as he promised to in his pre-match press conference.
Umyla Hanley, Gareth O’Brien, Joe Ofahengaue, Edwin Ipape, Frankie Halton, Owen Trout all dropped out with Darnell McIntosh, Andy Badrock, Aaron Pene, Alec Tuitavake, AJ Towse, Brad Dwyer coming in.
And it’s worth noting that this isn’t a witch hunt against any of the players that were drafted in, plenty of Leigh’s ‘main men’ that remained in the 17 came up with absolutely basic errors of their own on the night.
Strangely, of the hosts’ depth players, it was Jack Darbyshire who stood tallest: and he was wearing the colours of Salford making his Super League debut against his parent club as a loanee.
Lam’s side were unable to cope with the mass change, a concern in itself before you even begin to analyse individual performances and errors.
38-6: A scoreline which doesn’t paint the full picture
Deservedly falling behind midway through the first half, only a piece of individual excellence from Tesi Niu ensured the Leopards wouldn’t head in behind at the break on Friday night.
Ethan O’Neill then dotted down with 90 seconds remaining of the first 40 to nudge the Leopards ahead 12-6.
Had they gone in behind, there couldn’t have been any arguments. Salford were the better side in the first half, there’s no doubt about it.
The traffic was more one way in the second half, but again, it took a disorganised Leigh until the 58th minute to add any further points as Josh Charnley shot over for a try in the corner.
Matt Davis, Bailey Hodgson, Charnley and AJ Towse all added further tries in the final 20 minutes against a tiring Red Devils defence to add some gloss to the scoreline.
But we can’t imagine boss Lam will be anything but disappointed with the vast majority of that showing.
Still in the hunt for the top two, Leigh welcome Castleford Tigers next Thursday night and then travel to Warrington Wolves before ending the ‘regular’ season with back-to-back home clashes against St Helens and Huddersfield Giants.
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