What a way to end my playing association with the Northern Rail Cup competition. And what a final!

Rarely can the cliche ‘a game of two halves’ be applied more than at Blackpool on July 17th and it must have been a great advert for Championship football. It certainly felt that way on the pitch at Bloomfield Road as my team Leigh Centurions left it oh so late to snatch victory against Halifax from the jaws of defeat!

At half-time you wouldn’t have placed many bets on Leigh lifting the trophy but an inspirational and focused team talk from Basil, our affectionate term for coach Ian Millward on account of his red hair, laid the foundations for a great second half comeback.

All we did was do what Halifax did in the first half but fractionally better with a marginally improved completion rate! You never stop believing on the rugby field as long as you’re in touching distance of victory and that’s a lesson I’ve learnt time and time again in this great sport.

The day started memorably at the LSV as we gathered for the coach and there was such a buzz amongst the players. You could feel the energy that was there and believe me, that could have been a bad thing. It could have backfired but those older heads in the team, those that had experienced these occasions before such as myself, helped to get that energy channelled properly.

We got to the stadium a little earlier than planned and that too could have affected our mental preparations so a few of us took in the schools rugby final that was taking place. Witnessing the excitement on the faces of those youngsters just reminded me of playing in a warm up game as a kid for Teatatu Roosters and seeing the legendary Mal Meninga walk past us in the tunnel offering a few words of encouragement.

Those kind of experiences stick with you and I’m sure it was exactly the same for those youngsters from Warrington’s Sir Thomas Botelier High School and Walkden High School. I’d been lucky enough to run a training session with the former earlier in the week and knew the faces.

It allowed us to take our focus away from the game for a few brief minutes and allowed us to start our thinking about the task in hand at the right time.

This is my 17th and final year as a professional and getting that pre-match routine right is essential. The warm up went to plan and you sensed we were all up for this. I do apologise for this statement and hope you’re not eating whilst reading this but I, like many players feel the need to throw up before the game. I guess for me it acts as some sort of purging of the butterflies…and everything else!! All part of my routine!

The Bloomfield Road pitch is smaller than our training pitch at the LSV so we’d had ir remarked to the exact same dimensions. That helped us get a feel for the spaces we had to work with.

The first half saw us execute those training routines poorly. We bunched up too much and gave Halifax the spaces to exploit which they did very well. They were incisive exactly when they needed to be. We knew we were in a match and going in at half-time 10-0 down led to that inspired team talk.

Basil bought his projector and demonstrated to us at the break exactly what we were doing wrong both in defence and attack. Having that much detail at your fingertips at a tense time helped to calm us down and get us refocused. As we trotted out for the second 40 we all knew exactly what we had to do. Play better for starters!

We started opening up and throwing the ball around for once and that only engenders confidence as long as you get it right but the game could have gone either way right upto the death. The noise from the Leigh fans as we gradually clawed our way back was as loud as anything I’ve heard on a rugby league field. That Bloomfield Road stadium really does channel the passion of the supporters and it does give you a genuine lift.

Of course there was a well publicised context to all of this from the Leigh perspective with the club facing adversity off the field. These sort of situations can make you or break you but all of the players agreed to forego their win bonuses and that strangely made us all a little bit stronger. We were as together as a team as anything I’ve witnessed in my time in RL.

We really were playing for the club and its future and when you all have a strong attachment to that club then anything is possible.

We all set our collective and individual goals for the season in January with one clear objective of reaching the Northern Rail Cup final. Once you’ve done that you move on to part B and aim to lift the trophy and that’s exactly what we did albeit with seconds to spare.

When the final hooter went we just had this most incredible outpouring of relief and pleasure and that’s when you can sink into the feeling of oneness with your team mates and fans. The solidarity of community is a big part of this game and you could see that as we paraded in front of our fans.

What a final indeed and what a great way to bow out of a competition that has given me a lot of fantastic memories!