It is safe to assume everyone associated with Leigh Leopards will be pinching themselves on Saturday. Not even a Super League club last season, the Lancashire town with a population barely exceeding 40,000 will be front and centre of the rugby league world as the Leopards walk out at Wembley in the Challenge Cup final for the first time since 1971.
It is a remarkable story and one two of their players could have never envisaged. Zak Hardaker and Tom Briscoe won every trophy on offer in the domestic game with Leeds Rhinos, but were released by the Super League heavyweights at the end of last season.
Now in their 30s and perhaps accepting of the fact their chance to play in major finals had passed, they joined promoted Leigh last winter, with the goal of keeping them in Super League. Instead, they are part of a side third in the league with six games to go and one win from history if they defeat Hull KR.
“When you leave big clubs, and probably get a bit older as well, you think your opportunities get less and less to play in games like this each year,” Briscoe says. “But you keep putting in the work and trying to achieve something. I’ll know when it’s time to finish and it isn’t yet. I was confident when I signed here we could stay up but since then it’s been incredible.”
Briscoe was not offered an extension to his nine-season stay at Headingley, while Hardaker failed to agree terms on a new deal having rejoined the club for a short-term stint last year. Winners of the cup in 2014 and 2015 with the Rhinos, they have the opportunity to do it again, albeit in remarkably different circumstances.
“In some ways it’s more exciting than any other final I’ve played in,” Hardaker says. “You’re expected to play in big finals for clubs like Leeds but this is a genuinely historic moment for the club and the town. It’s not lost on us as a squad and me as a player. Normally, if you get to a final it’s with a club who are expected to be there.
“Did I think that moments like this had gone for me and my career? Maybe. It’s not difficult to think something like that when you leave a big club. I wanted to get something sorted there but nothing materialised. However, when the chance to join Leigh came up I felt there was something special brewing.”
At least a quarter of Leigh’s population are expected to travel to Wembley. It is the very definition of a rugby league town, one which has been starved of success and has spent the past 50 years in the shadows of their borough neighbours, Wigan. This time, though, it will be Leigh that has the spotlight.
“It’s very different to the other finals because the expectation at so-called bigger clubs is always there and the expectation to achieve weighs on you a bit,” Briscoe says. “There’s a real connection between the town and the players here, which is very special. That’s been one of the biggest things that has stood out about the move, the passion of the fans.”
Controversy has plagued Hardaker throughout his career but the 31-year-old’s move has helped him produce some of his best form for years. Wembley also affords him an opportunity he feared had passed him by. “To have my kids there will be really special,” he says. “I did wonder if I’d ever get to play in another final after my kids had been born and for them to see their father play in a Challenge Cup final will be a really proud moment.
“It’s been a pretty wild journey as everyone knows but since having kids I’ve learned to appreciate the little things a lot more. For them to see me in a final will be really nice.”
Briscoe, a three-time winner of the cup, is fondly remembered for his exploits in the 2015 final, when he scored a record-breaking five tries in Leeds’s 50-0 win over Hull KR. But despite how highly he ranks that moment, his departure from the Rhinos and the fairytale element to Leigh’s run to Wembley has left him saying: “This would rank right up there with the great moments.”
