Leigh Leopards will endure arguably their biggest month of the season over the next few weeks, with a spell of away games looking to be crucial for their play-off and top two hopes.
Finishing first or second was the club’s goal at the start of the year, as they look to outdo last year’s incredible third-place finish, which was a club record for their highest ever league finish.
Lam is still confident his side can achieve that goal, but with six other teams ahead of them, they have an incredible task on their hands if they are to achieve it.
There’s no denying that a top six or top four place would be a great achievement given their start to the season and how they won just one of their opening five matches.
However, with players back fit and starting to click, there is a real possibility that the Leopards could surge up the table and finish the regular season in and around the summit of the ladder.
To do that though, they will have to come out on top of a spell of five consecutive matches on the road, with huge games against Warrington and Hull KR included in that run.
This part of the season comes as no surprise to Lam and his men, who have to do this every year due to the pitch at the Leigh Sports Village being ripped up and transformed ahead of the new football season.
That doesn’t make it any less difficult, and the boss has now explained how he plans to go into the 50-day period and come out on top.
He said to the press: “We’ve got a bit of a philosophy around it that we’ve been successful with in the past.
“It’s a year-to-year thing, you’ve got to make sure that the group’s playing some decent rugby and the timing’s okay at the moment for us.
“But the positive of it is if we can find a way to be successful in this next quarter of the season, it gives us a whole heap of games at home in the last quarter.
“That’s what we’ve got to look forward to and keep getting some bodies back. [We’ve got] a couple of still niggly injuries, but we’ll deal with that.
“But more importantly, I think we’ve got a bit of a plan around the away games, which suits us fine.”
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Top two finish still reachable believes Leigh Leopards boss
Leigh’s home form is strong, so that run of games at the LSV at the end of the season could prove pivotal.
The side currently sit eight points off Leeds in first and six off Warrington in second. With over half the season to go the gap isn’t insurmountable, but it would certainly be an incredible feat for the side to claw their way back into the top two race.
“We’ve had a bit of luck, I feel,” Lam said if the pre-season goal was still reachable. “Everyone’s been beating each other at the top there, which helps. We’re not too far away.
“If you put a string of wins together against the top four teams, it certainly changes really, really quickly.
“We need a little bit of luck, I guess, over the next six weeks. We’ve got to play really well and need a bit of luck, as in the opposition results that unfold.
“I feel confident that we’re still in a good position there to climb the ladder, in which we will. But it all starts again when we find a win there at Castleford and a win at Bradford in the next two weeks.
“It completely changes everything as we enter the halfway part of the season.”
Leigh have already beaten Leeds this season, but have lost all their games against the other five teams in the play-off spots. That will need to change if they want to climb the ladder, whilst they will also need to avoid any slip-ups against teams below them in the table.
