Leigh Leopards win Challenge Cup in Golden Point at Wembley

In the most dramatic fashion, Leigh Leopards edged a feisty, controversial contest in Golden Point against Hull KR as Lachlan Lam won his side the Challenge Cup.

The win means Adrian Lam has been successful in successive showcase events after winning the 1895 Cup at Tottenham just over a year ago.

The winning point came in the fourth minute of Golden Point after Hull KR levelled the scores with second of normal time remaining.

It was Leigh who got the scoring underway with them taking advantage of some needless errors right across the Rovers ranks.

But the first try fell to Jezz Litten as he danced through the Leopards and put the Robins into an early lead under the arch.

Rovers looked to be in again when Lachlan Lam could’ve been punished with a professional foul, but video referee ruled in favour of the Leopards, meaning no penalty try or punishment for the man who later went on to win the Lance Todd award.

Just five minutes after the controversial talking point, Lam was the centre of the stage once again, but this time it was for his magic agility as he played a neat one-two with Kai O’Donnell before flying over to regain the lead.

Controversy continued as the decision began to stack up against Willie Peters as Minchella was set to the bin for ten minutes after leaving a late elbow on Leigh’s Ben Reynolds.

A KR penalty goal on the hooter left the interval score line at 8-10 to Adrian Lam’s men, but tensions were rising in the capital.

The second period saw slightly less action, a lot less quality and errors scattered all over the performances of both respective sides as neither side ever really sustained any sort of pressure in the game.

With the scores level thanks to another KR penalty goal, Tom Briscoe was next to put a stamp on the proceedings with a simple try over in the far corner, and that’s when Leigh needed to kick on.

But they failed to build on an already narrow lead and with seconds remaining, KR got level.

A controversial try which took an absolute age to confirm from Matt Parcell, meant we was heading to golden point in one of the biggest games in the Rugby League calendar.

With scores tied at 16-16, the atmosphere around the ground screamed tension. A crowd of 58,000 watching on, a point at any given moment would earn said player instant hero status and their name written into the respective club’s folklore.

Both sides had missed attempts, Leigh’s the easier of the two, but in the fourth minute of the added on time, Lachlan Lam wasn’t going to miss.

Gareth O’Brien was the expected kicker, and with white shirts launching themselves inf ront of the ball in desperation, he intelligently passed the ball off to Lam, and the rest was history.

Lam later revealed in his post-match press conference that it was his first professional drop goal, and what a time to get it.

Leigh were the title holders.

They’d gone from being victorious in the 1895 Cup just over a year ago, to being crowned Challenge Cup holders for the first time since 1971 – a time Adrian Lam alluded to in his post-match comments, describing how they had recently watched it back and the footage was ‘black and white.’

But this may well be just another step in this remarkable Leigh Leopards story.

There may well not be another club who has so many stories within one team, so many individual talking points, yet the most coerced team arguably currently in the competition.

From players like Zak Hardaker and Josh Charnley being axed out of previous squads and losing their place, to Derek Beaumont’s flamboyant weekly antics keeping every Leigh fan on their toes, and of course the fact you have one of competition’s leading superstars in the form of his career playing under his own father.

Leigh are a fairy-tale, and at the very least – a journalist’s dream.

Of course, Adrian Lam can’t allow his side to get ahead of themselves. We saw last year how Wigan Warriors completed a memorable victory in the Challenge Cup, to then fall away in the play off’s and allow their season to fade away.

But Lam’s an experienced coach, and with the ‘favourited’ club having fairly inconsistent seasons across the board, there’s no reason why Leigh can’t claim some more silverware this season.

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