Josh Veivers, Josh Charnley, Stefan Marsh, Iain Thornley, Shaun Ainscough, Stuart Howarth, Sam Powell, Ben Davies, Sam Gee, Neil Holland, Liam Farrell, Jonny Walker, Chris Tuson.
Replacements – Jack Hughes, Logan Tomkins, Matty Sarsfield, Greg Burke, Jonny Molloy.
That was the Wigan team named to take on Leigh today for the second of three pre-season games that were agreed in 2009.
While a few of those lads have first team experience, that is a young team in anybody's book. With Leigh building up the game as taking on Super League and not Super League of tomorrow, there were quite a few disenchanted words put on the RLFans.com messageboards of both teams.
I do agree with them somewhat, but, as someone that has always had a staple diet of Reserve and Academy rugby I'm always pleased to see young players and wonder how they will go against older opposition.
A couple of years ago at Hilton Park, Leigh named a Reserve side that defeated Blackpool 44-16 in what was a cracking performance and that team went on to have a good year, despite falling a game short of reaching the Grand Final.
Given the proximity of the two clubs it's a good bet that in future years at least a couple of those names from the Wigan teamsheet will end up wearing Leigh colours, take Nick Stanton as an example. Two seasons ago Stanton had the likes of Josh Veievers, Stuart Howarth, Ben Davies, Neil Holland and Liam Farrell as team-mates.
Over the last few seasons other players the club signed from Wigan include David Whittle, Kieron Purtill, Eric Andrews, Chris Irwin, Andy Isherwood and Sam Reay, so it's not beyond the realms of fantasy!
Writing before the game I am sure that the Wigan team named will test Leigh with maybe both teams getting more from it than if Wigan had brought their aray of stars, however my guess will be that the crowd will be down from an anticipated 5000 plus.
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