Well drilled Bowdon clock up 12 tries.

Another week, another much changed starting fifteen. Leigh travelled to Bowdon yesterday with several changes to their starting pack and a new centre combination due to either unavailabilities or injuries. The continuing saga of Leigh’s season, so far, unfortunately.

Bowdon set out their stall, from the first minute of the game, when they ran in an unconverted try, down their left hand flank, to get the scoreboard in motion.

Rob Drake pulled back six points for Leigh, in the next ten minutes, with two well-struck penalties, which seemed to give Leigh some confidence and momentum.

During this short lived, upbeat period, excellent vision from scrum half, Alex Leadbetter, spotted a mismatch down the blindside and he fired out a sublime long, flat pass to Elliott Ryan, who outpaced the Bowdon cover defence, to score a well taken, unconverted try, wide out on the left hand side, to extend Leigh’s lead.

Bowdon 5 Leigh 11.

Bowdon immediately bounced back and scored a converted try to retake the lead, when sloppy tackling by Leigh allowed them to run through the heart of the defence.

A Leigh player was yellow carded, soon after this and Bowdon were quick to capitalise on this newly gained advantage, by running in three more tries before half time, one of which was converted, to take the sides off at the break with Bowdon leading by twenty nine points to eleven.

Bowdon re-emerged from their half time huddle with their coaches, Josh Strauss and Byron McGuigan, to continue from exactly where they had left off.

They soon racked up five more tries and four conversions before Leigh knew what had hit them.

However, good hands by Leigh, in the sixty-fifth minute, found Glen Stephens in space and he cleverly drew the defence, to put Joe Harrison away down the left wing for a brilliant, unconverted try, which temporarily raised Leigh’s spirits.

Bowdon, however, added two more tries to their tally before the final whistle and finally emerged as very worthy winners by seventy-four points to sixteen.

Man of the Match for Leigh was the mercurial Rob Drake who produced another master class, against all the odds, with Alex Leadbetter a very close second, for his unstinting efforts and brilliant distribution.

This was another valiant effort by all of the lads in the squad and they never gave up, with their defence at times, being nothing short of heroic but Leigh’s inability to field a settled team is seriously taking its toll on this season’s campaign.

There will be no First Team fixture next week but the following week, 17th November, Leigh entertain 5th placed Rochdale at Hand Lane K.O. 2.15 p.m.