Leigh Leopards head coach Adrian Lam has shared a bold prediction regarding one of the club’s off-season signings, tipping Innes Senior to become the best winger in Super League.
A bold admission on it’s own, Lam has prefaced that with consistency in the squad selection, Senior could eventually develop into one of the competition’s very best wingers over the course of the next five months.
Lam’s comments came in the aftermath of Leigh’s 30-16 win over Huddersfield Giants, a game in which Senior scored his fifth Super League try of the season.
Recent weeks have seen the Ireland international thrust into the centres with Umyla Hanley and Tesi Niu both missing out on Thursday night but Lam was keen to praise Senior for his efforts.
“Innes, what he’s shown here in the first quarter of the season has been incredible,” Lam said post-match in a presser shared to the club’s YouTube channel.
Senior is one of the few Leigh players to have appeared in every Super League game so far and he’s turned up on plenty of occasions, surpassing 100 metres in eight of the matches with the outside back averaging an impressive 133.5 metres per game.
It means he ranks fifth for the number of metres made in the competition and he’s the only player in that top five to have exclusively played in the outside backs, making Lam’s claim less bold when you dive into the stats.
The Leigh coach claimed: “I think he’s going to be one of the best wingers in the competition by the halfway mark and by the end of the year and within 12 months, I think he’ll be possibly the best I’m hoping.
“That’s what he’s been brought here for and I’m excited.”
Explaining why he could well kick on further, Lam pointed to the position changes and the fact he’s often had back-rowers inside him with the 25-year-old tipping for a very strong second two-thirds of the season.
“He’s had different centres inside him every week just about or a different second-rower, so once we get some cohesion there and a little bit of repetition then I think the dynamic side of him will come alive. I’m pretty excited.”
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