As Leigh Leopards battle Wigan Warriors and St Helens for a spot in the top two and a home semi-final in the Super League play-offs in light of their Challenge Cup success, one man continues to be talked about and that is skipper John Asiata.
He has been making headlines since the Challenge Cup semi-final when he injured four St Helens players will low tackles.
Paul Wellens said that Agnatius Paasi’s knee was “blown to smithereens” and now Paasi is out with an MCL, ACL and ankle ligament issues.
The tackle though is legal in the laws of the game despite what some have said about it.
Now Leigh owner Derek Beaumont has had his say on Asiata:
“The best human being I’ve met in the game is just an absolute quality human being,” he said on the Last Tackle.
“He’s so selfless, so charitable, thinks about others. He’s a great leader with his actions. His actions are always louder than his words, but when he speaks people take notice and he speaks well. He puts his body on the line and he’s so committed.
“He goes out in the community, he coaches one of the local amateur teams and he’s taking the cup this afternoon to Darien House in Chorley, that a lot of rugby people help out and get involved in. I spoke to John for about an hour to convince him to sign for us during the whole COVID situation.
“My views on it is the same my charity stuff is and it was an hour’s talk of a just a real connection and we’ve just got this special connection and he’s a fantastic man who I’ll always be in debt to along with the rest of the players.”
He did admit he doesn’t like Asiata’s tackle technique: “We don’t like that tackle technique because it puts John at risk as well. He’ll get looked at at the end of the year but I think the reasons he should be talked about are the ones you just talked about.
“So he’s a massive, massive part in what we do with the ball and huge in defence. That was just desperation. People run at him, they target him, tire him out. They got our middles off before half-time.
“The only teams who have done it this year to us since, they’ve worked hard on it. And when he gets tired he’ll do desperate actions, and if he tries a conventional tackle he’ll just put his head there and that’s what he did and if he tries a conventional tackle he’ll pass his scores and we don’t know to handle it.”