Lachlan Lam still hasn’t reached the absolute peak of his powers at Leigh Leopards says his head coach Adrian Lam.
The half-back will be in action this evening as Leigh take on Wakefield Trinity in the eliminator round of the Super League play-offs and if the Leopards are to progress to the final four, Lam will likely play a key role.
The 27-year-old recorded 41 try assists for the Leopards this season and while that wasn’t enough to claim a spot in the Dream Team or in the Man of Steel running, it was enough to help his side to finish third after 27 rounds of action.
Lam has spent the last three and a half years with the Leopards but this season has arguably been his best, with the scrum-half hitting consistently high standards week in, week out, behind a dominant pack.
However, his head coach and father Adrian Lam believes he still has room for growth in his game.
“I think he’s up there but I still think he has one or two levels to go, I really do,” the Leigh boss told Serious About RL “Since he’s turned up his development has been incredible and just his skill to deliver the right pass at the right time, there’s no better in the world.
“It’s something that he can keep getting better at.”
Asked if his son might just be better than he was, Lam replied with a wry grin: “No, not in a million years…
“My game was slightly different to his. I was no way near as skilful as he is but I had a different type of mentality to his I think. Everyone has their own style. I think I scored more tries than him, that’s the difference…”
Leigh Leopards boss hails Daryl Powell
Lam won’t mind who gets on the scoresheet this evening, though, just as long as the Leopards get over the line against a Wakefield side who have emulated what the Leopards achieved two seasons ago by earning a play-off spot in their first season back in the top flight.
Leigh and Wakefield have met three times already this year, with Leigh winning the latter two, including a Challenge Cup quarter-final at Belle Vue. As such, Lam knows what to expect from Daryl Powell’s side this evening when they travel across the Pennines to Leigh Sports Village.
“They’ve followed a similar path to us three years ago and they play a similar game to what we play,” Lam added on Wakefield. “I think we’ve changed the way we’ve played this year and the time they beat us at home was at the start of the year when we were still a bit up and down.
“Hopefully we’re a different beast now to what we were then. I think we’re more of a complete team and we’ll keep growing with this team too over the next years because it’s a fresh side.”
On Powell, he said: “Sometimes it’s not the end of the world when a team goes down because you can re-build it from the start and it gives you a year of training every week and the games you win on the weekend, we were winning by 40/50/60, that becomes like a training run.
“You have 12 months where you’re training together and building confidence and then you come up and maintain that. That’s exactly what they’ve done. I think he’s done a really good job there, they play some good rugby, picked up some good signings and it will be a tough game on Friday night.”
