Leigh Leopards owner Derek Beaumont has finally reacted to the club’s preliminary IMG grading, but he’s taken issue with the system itself and particularly how the Leopards fare compared to Championship side Bradford Bulls.
The Leopards were ranked 12th among the 35 professional clubs meaning they would be within Super League should the gradings take immediate effect.
Their score of 12.45 saw them land a Grade B and Beaumont has also assured fans that they will be at a Grade A for the 2025 campaign, which would guarantee them a place in the top flight.
Discussing IMG in general and reacting to his team’s score Beaumont pointed out what he felt was a major issue with the system, and in doing so he took somewhat of a swipe at West Yorkshire side Bradford Bulls.
“What was alarmingly wrong to me and this isn’t critical of any club, but I’m going to name Bradford,” Beaumont told the Leopards Youtube Channel.
“Nobody can argue with me that on the face of it, on those two scores, when I’m looking at it there’s about a 0.45 difference between Leigh and Bradford. 0.25 of that is from winning the Challenge Cup, which you lose. So I’m looking at that as 0.2 difference.
“Now, something then strikes me as, ‘this can’t be working correctly’, because again, I’m saying no disrespect to Bradford, but their stadium, the pitch doesn’t meet the minimum standards anyway. It’s dilapidated. It’s no longer a top quality playing surface, it needs significant investment or a new stadium, which they’re aiming to get and I hope they do.”
Beaumont continued: “I fail to see how any kind of scoring structure would put them so close to a team that’s in a modern facility state of the art stadium, with LED boards, with a big screen, with a fantastic playing surface. A team that in the last three years has been in Super League in two of them, it’s done the treble in the year it wasn’t in Super League in the other divisions.
“It’s just won the Challenge Cup and finished fifth and has probably got more eyes on it than a lot of clubs in terms of media attention, as well as raising the bar on the entertainment and what it’s bringing to the game.
“In my mind’s eye, and lots of fans have said it, we’re actually putting out what people think the game should be doing. That’s my interpretation of it, what we did last year.
“That can’t surely measure 0.2 different to what Bradford are offering. So if it does then the way you mark your books is wrong, because without being rude, it’s almost like having one of your highest performing students only getting 0.2of a mark more than one of the money your lower, looking facilities and where they’ve been in the game. So that didn’t look right, was the first thing.”
