East knocked out of play-offs by rampant St Pats (From Leigh Journal)

Leigh East 22 Wigan St Pats 44

5:53pm Thursday 17th November 2011 in Sport

LEIGH East’s hopes of finishing as champions in the final National Conference winter season are over.

After finishing top of their group in the interim season, they were knocked out of the play-offs by Wigan St Pats.

Their inaugural summer campaign will start on March 3.

At half time on Saturday nobody would have considered that Pats were going to win in such emphatic style, East having led by 18-4 until a couple of minutes before the break courtesy of tries from Adam Holland (2mins), Danny Kilshaw (23mins) and Owain Brown (33mins).

The turning point came three minutes from the interval when Pats loose forward Marlon Alker was shown a red card and East centre Carl Redford given yellow, both for throwing punches.

Pats were awarded a penalty when play resumed and scrum half Dean Hatton immediately scored in the corner, Schofield converting to take the teams into the break with East leading 18-10.

The visitors took the game to East from the restart and scored two tries plus a conversion to take a narrow 18-20 lead before East’s compliment was back up to 13 men.

Gavin Hunter (49mins) crossed for an unconverted try to regain the lead but he spirited 12 men of St Pats stuck to their game plan and picked up the pace of the game, catching East on the back foot and forcing numerous penalties that led to three more tries.