Leigh are back against Bradford on Sunday afternoon, and this one comes with a twist: it is their first meeting with the Bulls under the Leopards name. It is only the third time the clubs have ever met in Super League, but the last one still hangs over this fixture.
That game came at Odsal on July 3, 2022, when Leigh won 56-6 and scored ten tries in West Yorkshire. Adrian Lam’s side were in the middle of a treble-winning Championship season, taking the 1895 Cup, the League Leaders' Shield and the Grand Final before moving up.
The reunion is sharper because three players from that Leigh team are now on Bradford’s side. Aekins has switched clubs after his season with Leigh in 2022, Chamberlain is there on season-long loan from Hull FC, and Joe Mellor, Leigh’s co-captain that year, joined Bradford ahead of 2026 after Kurt Haggerty became head coach.
The rest of that 2022 side has scattered across the game, and the overlap tells its own story. Ferguson, who scored 21 tries in 17 appearances and kicked one goal for Leigh that year, is now in Australia’s local leagues with Orange CYMS ahead of the 2026 campaign. Macdonald moved on to St Helens after scoring 27 tries in as many matches in his sole season at Leigh. Reynolds left at the end of 2023 as a Challenge Cup winner after three separate stints and 148 of his just shy of 250 career games at Leigh. Sidlow retired at the start of this year after later spells with Oldham and Swinton, while Inu finished playing at the end of 2022 before moving into coaching with Salford Red Devils and, briefly this year, North Wales Crusaders.
There is still a bigger edge to this than a simple reunion. Leigh’s last win in the matchup was a rout, but Bradford now have three men who were in the middle of it, and that makes Sunday less about remembering 2022 than seeing how much those old roles have changed. The question now is not whether the past is in the room; it is how Bradford use it when the clubs meet again for only the third time at this level.
