LEIGH put the finishing touches to a 100 per cent home Premiership record in stunning style.
Now they will need more of the same to reach the quarter-finals.
Victory at Rochdale this weekend will be good enough to reach the lucrative knockout stages on the road to Old Trafford.
And if they continue to play in the same vein as the 20-6 thumping of First Division Keighley they are home and dry. Four wins out of four at Hilton Park are handsome credentials.
Dean Purtill, David Ingram and Nick Jenkins were all laid up with flu on Sunday. But you would hardly have noticed as Leigh won with something to spare.
The battle was won up front where Tim Street, Andy Pucill and Tau Liku hammered the Yorkshire side into submission.
Then there was Safraz Patel whose terrior-like defence helped Leigh through their stickiest moments at the start of each half.
And not forgetting the finishing qualities of Andy Fairclough, playing out of position at centre, yet still managing to come up with two crucial tries.
Leg-weary Leigh struggled to come to terms with the pace of the game early on and were 6-0 down inside 14 minutes when full-back Matt Foster steamed onto a short pass and shot over for a Chris Robinson converted try from 20 metres.
But Keighley's advantage was quickly reduced to two points when Chris Wilkinson knocked over two penalties in quick succession.
Just before the half-hour Leigh hit the front with Street muscling his way through and popping up an overhead pass for Fairclough to streak away to the posts for a six-pointer.
Leigh landed the knockout blow just before half-time. Liku made the breakthrough and his sweet pass saw Fairclough burst clear to score wide out. Although Wilkinson could not goal, he put Leigh 16-6 ahead with another penalty on the stroke of half time.
That was it - game, set and match.
Keighley swarmed all over the Leigh defence at the start of the second half but a combination of unsteady finishing and tenacious tackling kept the Hilton Park line intact.
The only points in a tryless second half came from the accurate Wilkinson who put over another penalty and wrapped things up with two late field goals.
LEIGH: O'Loughlin; Kay, Hill, Fairclough, Sarsfield; Patel, Wilkinson; Street, Hudspith, Pucill, Daniel, Liku, Gunning. Subs: Aspinall, Smith, Conway, Gibson. Att: 1,750.
Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.
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