Up until a few weeks ago, you’d probably have been forgiven for not knowing exactly where the Leigh Leopards sat in the Super League table. Adrian Lam’s side started the season with a win at home to Leeds, but lost five of their next seven games and dropped to as low as 13th in the league. The lowlight was clearly the 54-0 drubbing away at Wigan, as the Leopards showed once more they just weren’t able to get over the Wigan hurdle.

So how exactly have they ended up not only in the playoffs, but also looking like a side that deserves to be there? Once the early rut was overcome, Leigh settled into somewhat of a groove. Largely, they beat the teams they were meant to beat, and lost to the teams they were meant to lose to. But it’s been towards the end of the season that Leigh have really come into their own, finishing fifth, which leads me to wonder: are they peaking at the right time, or are they operating at their maximum capacity? 

A run of four consecutive wins in the middle of the year, including two wins over Warrington, was probably the catalyst for the Leopards’ late-season form. They topped this off by backing up their opening-day win against Leeds by travelling to Headingley and beating them again. In doing so, Leigh dealt the Rhinos their first home loss of the season, and would be one of the three teams to do the ‘double’ over them. While one of the three is Wigan, the other was Hull FC, so quite how much that achievement means is up for debate. 

Even if Leigh were unable again to get one over on Wigan, losing 20-8 in round 21, and they let their guard down in a shock loss to Huddersfield, they’ve clearly ended their season in style. A 62-10 dismantling of Bradford, and a 48-10 victory against St Helens put them among the league’s great entertainers. 

How exactly have the Leopards turned it around in the space of a few months? Quite simply, the injured players who were missing at the start of the year are back, and perhaps even more simply, a lot of their players have just got better. 

Josh Charnley has been the league’s fourth-highest try scorer this season with 25 tries, and in the process has overtaken Ryan Hall as Super League’s all-time top try scorer. 

His partner on the right edge, centre Umyla Hanley, was absent from his side’s first nine games with a shoulder injury, but is now having the best season of his career. Described by his head coach Adrian Lam as the ‘ultimate professional’, Hanley scored and assisted his way into the Man of Steel rankings for rounds 10-18, and was even a late addition to Brian McDermott’s wide ‘Performance Group’ squad before the World Cup.

In the forwards, Joe Ofahengaue, another one of those who missed some of Leigh’s early season disappointments, has backed up his strong first half-year in the league in 2025 by being one of the competition’s leading forwards in 2026. The efforts of Hanley and Ofahengaue saw them voted into this year’s Dream Team.

Leigh have also got a quietly good halves pairing. Between them, Adam Cook and Lachlan Lam have registered 45 try assists, the joint-most of any in the league with Wigan’s Harry Smith and Bevan French. So, with players excelling in almost every position on the pitch, the stars might just be aligning for Leigh to make a run towards Old Trafford.

A lot of discussion in the run-up to the playoffs around Leigh has been whether they ‘need’ to win this year because they’re coming to the end of a cycle. They’re plagued, as many teams often are, by the myth that a team coming to the end of a recruitment cycle must win now. Owen Trout, Isaac Liu, and Robbie Mulhern are all moving on to pastures new. The NRL’s Cronulla Sharks are taking a punt on Trout, and Liu and Mulhern are off to the sunnier destinations of Hull FC and Castleford respectively. While Trout will arguably be a big miss, many of the players who have been key to their wins this year are still going to be there. The pressure of success being a necessity has, at least in my eyes, been somewhat overstated. 

So again, are they peaking at the right time, or are they just performing to their ceiling? Their first playoff game involves travelling to Wakefield, a team they last played *checks notes* last week, and they never really got into that game, losing 19-8 at home. Granted, Leigh’s efforts may have fallen flat when Wakefield scored first, extending the margin Leigh needed to win by to leapfrog them in the table beyond 28, but the Leopards never forced them to get out of second gear. 

Quite how much having played each other last week will impact their meeting this weekend is unclear. Perhaps both sides held things back last week, or maybe Leigh, with their slightly greater playoff experience in recent times, having made the semi-finals the past two years, can find something extra on the night. If they can find the form that has given them their biggest results in 2026, they just might be able to.