Super League forced to name two injured players in 17 by RFL rules

On Friday night Wigan Warriors may have gone top of the league but the bigger story involved the Leigh Leopards and Huddersfield Giants at Leigh Sports Village.

After 48 minutes, the game was stopped when the floodlights failed forcing the game to be finished on Sunday with the two meeting for 32 minutes on Sunday.

This was something Huddersfield Giants massively opposed and Ian Watson explained how Leigh were able to exploit the situation bring back fresh stars.

He said on Giants TV:

“Yeah, we were pretty open about that. We wanted an 80-minute game. We wanted to restart.

“You seem like morning when you’ve kind of lose but let’s have a look at what happen straight at the game, which we knew was gonna happen. John Asiata and Tom Amone come straight back on.

“Joe Wardle came on and took the first carry before the lights went out and then he’s been subbed straight off, so what are they saying to Joe? Basically, that they don’t trust him and that they need to get a Asiata and Amone back out there to to play?

“Well, that’d been great if we but they’ve had 48 hours rest now, in a game you wouldn’t have come off for 30 seconds and then gone straight back on would it?

“When they say it was fair, it wasn’t fair to both teams at all in the way it’s kind of been done. Our players had to travel back home on a coach on Friday night, by the time Leigh players would have been in bed, ours would have still been travelling home, so they wouldn’t have got to bed, so then there’s less recovery time or sleep time.

Making matters worse they had to start with two injured players on the bench in Chris Hill and Adam Milner because they were forced to name the same 17 as they ended the 48 minutes with:

“We expected them to make immediate subs but at the same time we’re two players down and Chris Hill now can’t play, but he could have played on Friday because the adrenaline was in his body to play. Can we now swap him for the 18th man? But you can’t.

“But then again, you can do subs straight away at the start of the game, which put two big influential players back on, whereas in the game, Asiata had just come off on Friday with a bad shoulder as well.