Leigh Rugby Club Was Formed in 1878 and Has Been the Heartbeat of the Community Ever Since
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Leigh Rugby Club was formed in 1878 and has been the heartbeat of the community ever since. One of the few towns in England where Rugby League is the dominant sport, Leigh’s own history is intrinsically linked with the fortunes of its rugby league club. Indeed, our town’s crest features a Latin motto which means ‘Progress with Unity’ something we always strive to instil. If you visit Leigh on a Sunday morning you will witness hundreds of children playing the game of rugby league. At our community clubs like Leigh Miners Rangers and Leigh East you will find entire families committed encouraging the disciplines and togetherness of our sport. It is a story reflected in Leigh’s own history where generations of the same family have pulled on the hooped shirt with pride. Both Leigh East and Leigh Miners play a kick away from Leigh Sports Village, a facility which has regenerated the town since it opened more than 10 years ago. More than just a stadium, this is a complex which has welcomed Champions League winners Bayern Munich and Rugby League World Champions Australia for training. Next year, the stadium will host several matches in the Rugby League World Cup and will also be a host venue for the Women’s European Football Championships. Manchester United Women have played their games at the stadium since their formation and global TV coverage means the name of the Leigh Sports Village is now a familiar one with sports fans across the world. It is a stadium which ‘Leythers’ are happy to call home and the atmosphere on match days can take your breath away. The LSV proved a catalyst for millions of pounds worth of new investment in the town as well as the completion of the Guided Busway between Leigh and Manchester which has attracted hundreds of commuters to live in our area and sparked a considerable rise in property prices. As one of the founder members of the sport, Leigh’s rich history compares favourably with many of its “bigger” contemporaries. Over the past 140 years, Leigh have nurtured some of the game’s finest players. Leigh came to prominence by defeating the New Zealand Maori tourists in 1889 and by the mid-1890s were one of the leading clubs in the North of England, supplying county players and their first England cap, fullback Tom Coop. The club was represented at the famous meeting at the George Hotel, Huddersfield in August 1895 and became a founder member of the Northern Union, making the historic breakaway from rugby union. In the last season of 15-a-side Leigh were champions in 1905-06 and went on to defeat the first Australian and New Zealand tourists, while forward Billy Winstanley was a member of the inaugural Northern Union tourists down under in 1910. The club lost 13 of its players in action during the first world war and these brave men and countless others from the town who lay down their lives for King and Country are remembered by current club officials, players and supporters at the Cenotaph each year. In 1921 Leigh won the Challenge Cup for the first time, defeating Halifax 13-0 at The Cliff, Broughton in front of a crowd of 25,000 and as the Northern Union became re-titled to Rugby League a year later continued to be a prominent club, their Mather Lane ground chosen to host representative games. Leigh hooker Joe Cartwright was chosen for the 1920 tour and duo Walter Mooney and Joe Darwell both toured in 1924. When the second world war began Leigh eventually lost their ground due to an extension of the adjoining cable works for war purposes and when peace returned had to find a new home. Tommy Sale, the club’s first post war captain, was instrumental in transforming a derelict site, previously used for allotments, into a magnificent new ground as hundreds of supporters provided voluntary labour and materials to lay the pitch, build terraces, and move the old main stand at Mather lane to the new ground in an extraordinary community effort. After one season playing at a temporary home at the athletics ground, Kirkhall Lane opened in 1947 which was renamed Hilton Park in 1959 to remember inspirational chairman James Hilton. Tommy Sale MBE, whose first involvement at the club was as a six-year-old ball boy in the 1920s had a lifelong association with the club in many different roles until his death, aged 97 in January 2017. His funeral service at Leigh Parish Church attracted one of the largest public gatherings ever seen in the town. Indeed, Leigh’s stadium stands proudly on Sale Way. Leigh shared in the post war boom for Rugby League, attracting huge crowds to their new ground, the highest over 31,000 for a cup-tie against St Helens. On three occasions the club broke the world transfer record to recruit star players Jimmy Ledgard, Joe Egan and Trevor Allan and they earned worldwide headlines after signing the world’s fastest man, Trinidadian sprinter McDonald Bailey for a short spell in the game. At the forefront of expansion and invention Leigh were one of two clubs to first erect floodlights and one of the first to favour a switch to Sunday rugby. The club was invited to take part in tours of Cornwall and France in an attempt to spread the popularity of the game. Home-grown star forward Mick Martyn, part of a famous rugby dynasty, scored 23 tries on the 1958 Great Britain tour - a record for a forward - and Leigh chairman Jack Harding was tour manger in 1970, when Great Britain last won the Ashes. Harding and Tommy Sale were instrumental in recruiting rugby league Hall of Fame member Alex Murphy OBE as player-coach and Murphy’s shrewd team building plans and inspirational play at half-back culminated in the 1971 Challenge Cup Final victory over Leeds, the 24-7 score-line one of the biggest upsets ever in the game. An estimated 100,000 people lined the streets of Astley, Tyldesley, Atherton and Leigh for the homecoming, demonstrating the influence of rugby in the district. Eleven years later Murphy, who had returned in a managerial and coaching role, inspired Leigh’s second Championship success, achieved in the final game of the season when 5,000 Leigh fans made the midweek trip to Whitehaven to cheer their side home. By now John Woods and Des Drummond were two of the game’s biggest superstars, Drummond earning worldwide fame for his extraordinary performances on the BBC Superstars television programme, reaching the world final in Hong Kong and projecting the skills and athleticism of the game’s leading players to a new audience. One of the yo-yo clubs in the new divisional structure of four up and four down, Leigh had the misfortune to be in the second division in the mid-1990s when Super League was introduced and the game switched to summer. The club rebuilt, re-branded as Leigh Centurions, and became one of the most consistent sides in the second tier, defeated three times in Grand Finals until regaining its place in the top-flight winning the championship grand final in 2004. But that one season in Super League in 2005 ended in relegation. By now Hilton Park was showing its age and eventually a move to new 12,000-plus capacity stadium as part of the Leigh Sports Village initiative driven by Wigan Council was made. The world class facilities, officially opened by the Queen and Prince Philip won great praise and the ground became a regular venue for internationals and important club games, attracting a 10,544 crowd for the 2013 World Cup match between Tonga and Cook Islands. Challenge Cup semi-finals have also been staged here and Wigan, Salford and Swinton are among the clubs to have used it as a home ground when their own were unavailable. Despite being one of the Championship’s leading clubs, four times winners of the league’s cup competition, financial problems increased as the disparity in funding between Super League clubs and the rest became more marked. In 2013 Derek Beaumont, a leading figure as a director in the 2004 push to Super League, returned to the Club, becoming owner and recruited a new non-executive board made up of respected local businessmen. With widespread community involvement and an active push to attract more younger fans and families, attendances grew and after three successive championship league leaders’ shields, promotion to Super League was achieved at the end of the 2016 season. A successful Heritage Day launch in 2014 saw many former players return to the Club to collect their heritage numbers while two years later a statue was unveiled on the Leigh Sports Village forecourt in honour of the town’s favourite son, John Woods. Mr Beaumont’s investment in quality on and off field personnel was reflected in some eye-catching signings, including NRL star Fui Fui Moimoi, whose arrival at LSV created worldwide exposure for the town. A crowd of 10,556 saw Leigh’s final home game that season against Batley, the Club’s highest home gate for nearly 30 years and made up almost exclusively of home fans. Leigh Centurions finished 11th in the 12-team competition of Super pledging their money towards team building for 2021. As a result, every League and fourth in the Qualifiers but lost their Super League place player in our current squad has Super League and/or NRL experience, after being narrowly defeated by Catalans Dragons at Leigh Sports many with international caps and supporters cannot wait for the chance Village in the Million Pound Game.