DALE Cardoza set Hilton Park alight with a try just ninety seconds into his Leigh Centurions debut as Chorley became the latest NFP side to bite the dust at Hilton Park.

The former Doncaster Dragons wing produced a piece of wizadry after climbing off the substitutes bench on the half hour mark, floated effortlessly down the left wing with a speed that suggested he had a bus to catch and endeared himself to the Leigh faithful with a score under the posts to mark his debut in style.

Like Goulding the week before, he got a welcome traditionally reserved for heroes.

Paul Terzis says that it is hard to motivate players for matches against lower opposition such as Chorley, but the performance of the players in the 48-12 win makes Leigh fans wonder how much better it can actually get. This,

the sixth league victory on the spin, was probably the least impressive, but it gave the Head Coach a chance to rest loose forward Adam Bristow ahead of the play-offs and also came with a number of players on the treatment table: Willie Swann and Phil Kendrick to name but two.

And even so, the Centurions had a number of gears to engage if the panic button should have been called upon at any time: it wasn't, and the hosts cantered to a comfortable victory.

Leigh set a good gallop at the outset and set the pace with a score inside the first four minutes. In Bristow's absence, Simon Baldwin slotted into the loose forward role and with a Bristow-style surging run, he managed to offload and send Neil Turley over bang in front to make adding his own extras a formality.

The lead was doubled soon after with a try of a bizarre nature that took longer to confirm than the winners of the Eurovision Song Contest.

After a spat between Simon Knox and Safraz Patel on half-way, Paul Rowley picked up the pieces and sprinted half the length of the field to touch down with players on both sides waiting for a whistle from referee Presley.

Matters were confused yet further by the sight of the touch judge racing onto the infield, but having consulted with his assistant, Presley awarded the four points.

Chorley tried to drag themselves back into contention with some positive contributions from centre Steve Ormesher and prop Simon Smith, but the game was won in the few minutes around Cardoza's entrance to the fray.

Knox showed he meant business by sending stars spinning around Wayne Bloor's head following a bruising hit, followed it up by sending Rowley over for his second, and then had a hand in Cardoza's otherwise solo effort before half-time.

But still, we saw little of the master Bobbie Goulding, who quietly got on with his own business at scrum-half for the duration. As Terzis later explained, he applied a professional touch to the game: "You could see that sometimes when we needed a spark in the match, Bobbie

was there to provide that. He is certainly not at a hundred per cent fitness yet but he is a professional and knows how far to push it during the game.

"It always happens with a debut that a player is going to be more up for it than usual so it will take time with Bobbie but I'm very happy with the progress.

"We must also think how hard it must be for a player like Bobbie to motivate himself for a match like Chorley though", Terzis continued. "He knows that

he has to handle himself in the right way but it must be in the back of his mind and it was in the back of our minds all week so we think it was a good day at the office."

With the foot off the pedal in the five minutes immediately before and after half-time, the visitors were thrown a microscopic lifeline. Turley's fumble was the catalyst for a comedy of errors on the Leigh line that allowed a grateful Martin Gambles to get the Lynx away from the dreaded

'nil' and although the same player was allowed to touch down on the hour mark, another Leigh four-pointer meant that the game was just about out of reach for Graeme West's men.

Chris Morley got on the scoresheet with a clever little shimmy to cross unopposed, while Andy Isherwood got in on the act just seconds after returning onto the field after making way for Cardoza in the first forty.

As Graeme West was later to lament, any slender if existing hopes of a Chorley fightback late on were scuppered by Anthony Murray's indiscipline as

the substitute's yellow card for dissent gave Chorley a one man disadvantage they could well have done without.

Leigh exploited the man over with Cardoza enthusiastically completing a brace, and as Terzis says, the best is yet to come from the young wing: "Dale has been brought here because he is a fantastic rugby league player and he certainly knows how to cross the try line. He is a handful for any defence but what we have got to realise about him is that he hasn't played for six weeks so there is a lot more to come from him in the future."

Prop Dave Whittle grabbed a try that his solid performance had cried out for with five minutes remaining, and Rowley also had time to seal his hat-trick after good build-up play from Goulding and John Hamilton towards the hooter.

"I would be a happy coach if we scored over forty points each week!", said a brutally honest Terzis afterwards. "We should be beating teams like Chorley, and it's just the way that you go about it sometimes. It's hard to motivate all the players sometimes but we have done a very good job here today."