I WOULD like to thank Leigh RLFC for making Sunday, February 11 a 'red letter day' for me by their winning display on national TV.

As a 69-year-old ex-miner who transferred from Bedford Colliery (Wood End) to a Leicestershire mine in 1968, the thing I missed most was watching Leigh RLFC. Incidentally, I worked alongside Mick Martyn and Norman Herbert at Bedford Colliery -- two superb forwards who would more than hold their own even now among today's superfit monsters.

I did play as an amateur myself but perhaps I will be remembered by the Leigh fraternity as a singer with Dick Stanley's band back in the early 50s at St Joseph's Hall.

We even did a show one Sunday at the old museum steps at Pennington Hall, when I sang the then number one in the hit parade Auf Weidersehn.

After leaving Leigh, four kids and a large mortgage encouraged me to take on a semi-professional career as Tony Lawrence at which I was quite successful, culminating in winning a recording contract with Polydor in 1975.

Mr James Eckersley

Coalville

Leicestershire