LEIGH LEOPARDS are confident the foundations are in place to stay among the Super League elite.
Their season is now over after losing in the first round of the play-offs, away at Hull KR on Friday night.
But their top-six finish, alongside a Challenge Cup triumph, make 2023 a clear success for a club that had never previously survived in Super League.
Now attention quickly turns to next season, with Leopards coach Adrian Lam plotting a number of new signings in a bid to improve on this year.
“We’ve probably got seven coming in next year,” revealed Lam, although he denied that Salford Red Devils halfback Brodie Croft would be one of them after Leigh were linked with the Man of Steel by Sky Sports.
“We’re building. We’ve put down the foundations to be a great club.
“We’ve played some great games this year and we need to do that on a year-to-year basis so we can get to the heights of the other big clubs in Super League. That’s what we aspire to be.
“We’ve started off really well, looking back on this season. There have been some great highs, and not only the Challenge Cup wins.
“We’ve broken records along the way, so many of them. Every week our historian is saying ‘you’ve done this’. It’s been achievement after achievement.
“That’s our first (play-off game) tonight. We’ve just had our first players in the Dream Team, let alone five of them. I’d like to see a list of all our achievements this year.
“It’s been an incredible journey.”
Lam admitted his disappointment at how that journey ended, with a 20-6 reverse to the team that they beat in the Challenge Cup Final, in what was a fifth defeat in seven since Wembley glory.
He said: “It was frustrating to watch at times. We didn’t get to see the true identity of us as a club and that’s the frustrating part.”
And he conceded the Leopards have not been the same side since winning the Cup: “We’ve been creaking towards the end.
“You know as a coach, you need momentum going into finals. We had that in the Challenge Cup but we didn’t have that here.
“We’ve had to change the way we play when we lost the senior players of our team in (Ricky) Leutele, (Zak) Hardaker and (John) Asiata (to injury). They’re the three main leaders of the group.
“And some of the players levelled off after the Challenge Cup rather than keep improving.
“The commitment and the day-to-day standards we set have never dropped. Just on game day, there seemed to be a dip there.
“That’s a lesson for me as a coach moving forward.”
