Featherstone fell to their first league defeat of the season as they visited fellow high flyers Leigh on Monday evening. Rovers were without James Lockwood, Jack Bussey and Jesse Sene-Lefao in a game that was dominated by Leigh’s marauding pack. Rovers looked to have put their cup final woes behind them in the opening exchanges as Luke Briscoe found his way to the line and offloaded to Joey Leilua only for the centre to fumble the grounding under huge defensive pressure. Sport can be cruel at times, perfectly demonstrated when Leigh went down to the other end and awarded a try despite the replay clearly showing that Inu’s foot was in touch. Leigh doubled their try tally inside ten minutes, no complaints this time as Asiata powered over the line. Rovers were further hampered as Craig Kopczak was taken from the field with an injury. The boys in butchers stripes bounced back after pressuring the Leigh line, a deft kick from Ryley Jacks was chased through and grounded by Mark Kheirallah. In what was an end to end game, Leigh hit back through 6’ 7” Blake Ferguson who collected a high kick to the corner. Rovers trailed 18-6 at the break, a number of penalties compounding Leigh’s dominance. As if scripted, Rovers came out firing in the second half, a superb backline move saw Connor Jones break through a gap to pull Rovers within a score of the hosts. Leigh however turned the screw, the dominant pack gave Leigh the platform to spread the ball out to the waiting Ferguson who scored his second of the game. Ipape put the game to bed with ten minutes to go as he shrugged off the Rovers defence to charge through under the sticks. Late drama saw Krisnan Inu and Sam Eseh see red cards in separate incidents as well as a yellow for Matty Wildie.
