Leigh Centurions produced the perfect response to last week’s disappointment by hammering Catalans Dragons 30-6 to give their Betfred Super League survival hopes a huge boost.
The Centurions arrived in the south of France on the back of a home defeat by Hull KR but returned to form in style to inflict a second successive loss on the Dragons.
The visitors went into the break 10-0 up courtesy of Adam Higson’s double and when Cory Paterson crossed early in the second half they were well on their way to a famous win.
Josh Drinkwater went over to make sure of the victory and Paterson rounded off a memorable evening late on after Brayden Wiliame had got the hosts on the board.
The win moved Leigh up to second in the Qualifiers Super 8s table and left Catalans in a Million Pound Game spot.
Leigh head coach Neil Jukes said: “I’m really pleased. It’s been a really difficult week after the loss last weekend. The boys were a bit down but it was important that we got them back up and ready for another fight this week.
“We prepared really well and effort-wise today we were outstanding. I thought our defence was outstanding to a man right from our contact to our work ethic. I thought on another day we could have posted another 16 or 18 points.
“From our experience last time (40-36 defeat) when we got a little bit of a lead, we worked on the areas where we didn’t quite do so well in the second half and we spoke about that experience and doing the things really well to get the result.
“That started with our kicking game and I thought our kicking game was superb today.”
Dragons head coach Steve McNamara said: “I think everything that could go wrong did go wrong from the first minute really with Paul Aiton’s injury in the early minutes followed by the kick from a wicked bounce which was a terrible start for us really.
“I thought the team was prepared well for this game so I’m obviously disappointed with what we’ve thrown up there.”
McNamara was disappointed with the number of times his team dropped the ball, adding: “It killed us really. We lost so many balls and our completion rate was terrible and we never gave ourselves a chance to do what we set out to do in that game.”