Unwanted at Wigan, Umyla Hanley was a little-heralded Leigh signing almost four years ago, but he is now established as one of Super League’s best backs.

THE end of 2022 was a mad time to be involved with Leigh.

Promotion at the beginning of October, beating Batley Bulldogs in the Championship Grand Final, was followed less than three weeks later by one of rugby league’s most surprising and, at least initially, controversial rebrands.

Out went the Centurions and in came the Leopards, with bold shirt designs to match. But just as significant was their equally bold recruitment strategy, with most of their new arrivals for Super League announced in one go at a Leigh Sports Village event.

Big names like Zak Hardaker, Tom Briscoe and Ricky Leutele showed owner Derek Beaumont and head coach Adrian Lam meant business, while Robbie Mulhern, Gareth O’Brien, Jack Hughes and Matt Davis have proven to be very astute signings too.

All contributed to their thrilling Challenge Cup triumph in 2023, beating Hull KR at Wembley, from which Leigh have launched themselves into league title contention with three successive play-off appearances.

But as the current squad looks to make that four come September, one of its leading lights is a player who might just prove to be the best of the pick-ups from late 2022 – not that anybody could have foreseen it at the time.

In early December, Umyla Hanley was surplus to requirements at Wigan Warriors. Having failed to receive offers from any other top-flight club, the then 20-year-old was ready to head for the construction site to earn his coin.

“He’d already bought his steel toe-cap boots and he was ready to let rugby league go altogether,” Lam revealed last year.

Thankfully Lam, under whom Hanley enjoyed ten of his 11 Wigan first-team appearances, was keen to give Hanley one more shot, arranging a low-key trial at Leigh which was only revealed publicly when he was spotted in a picture posted on the club’s social media channels.

“I left Wigan and didn’t have a team to go to,” Hanley now tells Rugby League World.

“I was being offered contracts by a few League One clubs and whatnot but, in my own head, I knew I was better and I wanted to be better.

“Leigh came up at the last second, offering a trial for 30 days. Luckily I got a contract at the end of it.”

Unsurprisingly, he cites Lam as a significant influence on his career, saying: “I’m really grateful to him and always will be.”

It was the Papua New Guinean boss who handed Hanley his Wigan debut, aged 18, during the depths of Covid in 2020, as a much-changed side lost 42-0 to St Helens.

“It was more about getting out there with other young lads making their debuts – I think there were about eight of us – so that was enjoyable.

“I’d joined Wigan at scholarship and left when I was 20 – I had four or five years there.

“(In the academy) I was with Brad O’Neill, Harry Smith, Oli Partington, Ethan Havard – there were some really good players.

“As a young kid I watched Wigan and legends like Sam Tomkins, Tommy Leuluai and Sean O’Loughlin. Being able to play for them was surreal.”

But it turned sour as, having played nine times in 2021, he appeared just once the following season under Lam’s successor, Matt Peet.

Hanley has previously said he “didn’t see eye to eye” with Peet, who “clicks with different people in different ways”.

But the 24-year-old can also look back now and reflect on how much he still had to learn at the time.

He says: “I went from being the best player at amateur level (he was a junior at Wigan-based Shevington Sharks), scholarship and academy to going up to first team, and it’s a massive jump.

“You don’t really realise it when you’re that young. I had to realise it quickly.

“The fact I wasn’t playing for Wigan really hurt me. I just wanted to be playing consistently for a team, wherever it was, so I made the decision in the end to leave Wigan and luckily ended up joining Leigh.

“I kind of fell out of love with the game a little bit. I went from playing every week, to playing first team, to playing nothing.

“There were a few loan games at Rochdale and Newcastle which actually really helped my development, but it was just the fact that I fell out of love with rugby and didn’t want to play any more. I didn’t find it fun.

“When I went to Leigh I found that again. I think that’s why I’m playing the way I am playing. I appreciate everything Leigh has done.”

The way he is playing is phenomenal – but it’s not been a straight-line success with the Leopards either.

After earning a full-time contract, Hanley played just twice for Leigh in that Cup-winning season, including in the quarter-final win at York.

And he remained a fringe player at the start of 2024, until coming into the side in March when Briscoe suffered a calf injury.

The veteran winger never appeared again for Leigh after that, so good was Hanley as his replacement, playing all 29 remaining games including, later in the season, a shift to the centre position he has now emphatically made his own.

“That consistency of playing, and team-mates trusting me, has given me confidence to become a better player,” he says.

“That’s what I’ve done. But I’ve still got a long way to go, I know that.”

He went from strength to strength in 2025, scoring 13 tries in 28 appearances to help Leigh to a new Super League high of third place, after which he was the club’s sole representative in the Dream Team.

This year didn’t get off to such a good start. A broken scapula and torn AC joint in his shoulder, suffered in a pre-season game against Warrington Wolves, meant Hanley only made his first appearance of the campaign in April.

An immediate recurrence, against the same opposition, meant another three weeks out, but he has since hit his stride with some stand-out performances.

He scored his first try of the season in his fourth game, a 42-6 win over Hull FC, but also set up two others and made tackle bust after tackle bust.

After that, coach Lam was glowing, telling the media: “I don’t know if there’s anyone else in Super League that competes that hard.

“He inspires the whole team, and I’m sure he’s inspiring the whole town at the moment with his actions.

“If we could all get like that, we’d be pretty hard to beat. It’s everything.

“It’s the way he trains. It’s the way he puts himself about within our sessions. He’s the ultimate competitor.

“He leaves no stone unturned. And he trains at that capacity and that intensity every week. Gameday is probably easier for him than how he trains.”

Asked where that work-rate comes from, Hanley replies: “I’m not sure, to be honest. I have got an older brother; maybe it was that!

“From a young age I’ve always wanted to win. I don’t care what it’s at. If it’s Connect 4 or Monopoly, I wanted to win. Whatever I can do to win, I will do it.”

While on the subject of family, it must be pointed out that he has rugby league in his veins as the son of one of the greatest ever British players, Ellery Hanley. But it was friends who got him into the sport at the age of six, and it’s his mother, Cordelia, who is his greatest inspiration.

“I definitely wouldn’t be here without my mum,” he says. “She’s supported me all the way and got me the things I needed, like lifts to faraway games. She’s always been my number-one rock and always will be.”

Back to his current form, and at the time of writing he’s scored tries in three successive wins against Warrington at Magic Weekend – another formidable performance of strong running – Castleford and Hull FC again.

That’s only intensified talk of international honours, despite being left out of new England coach Brian McDermott’s first list of players on a performance programme in June.

As well as world-class incumbents Herbie Farnworth and Jake Wardle, Leeds Rhinos captain Ash Handley – who also has the capability to cover the wing – was also selected in that squad.

However, there is nothing to suggest that a strong end to the campaign wouldn’t allow Hanley to force his way into the reckoning for a place on the World Cup plane to Australia.

“I try to go week to week, do my job and see what comes with that,” he says, “but it’s every lad’s dream to play for England and if you don’t want to be in the team, I don’t think you should be playing. Of course that’s a goal one day.”

He is also looking to the future by making steps into the property business, “buying run-down houses and renovating them”.

But the most immediate focus is on the run-in with Leigh, who will look to reach a first Grand Final should they secure their place in the top six.

“We had a pretty bad start and we all know that,” he adds. “We’ve had some key people out so it’s been nice to get some consistent games together.

“It’s shown recently that we are a really good team once we have our full team out. We’re showing what we can do.”

First published in Rugby League World magazine, Issue 523 (August 2026)