LEIGH'S strength and depth of their squad gives them an advantage over most of their main rivals in the race for NFP glory.

The Centurions saw that at first hand when the Cougars two major play-makers, Martin Wood and Nathan Antonik, were injured and unable to influence Sunday's result.

Stand-off Wood suffered a serious knee injury the previous week at Widnes while half-back partner Antonik lasted only three tackles before being stretchered off.

"They are big players for them," says Leigh boss Paul Terzis. "It just underlines that you need depth and quality in your sqaud in any competition and that's the beauty of our squad. It's got depth, so if a player gets injured we can replace him with another quality player.

"I don't think Keighley were able to do that."

Terzis also underlined the quality of Leigh's defensive work and how crucial it was to the final outcome.

"We were outstanding defensively. The only way they really tested us was through a good kick-chase game and shifting the ball hard to our right side.

"I was particularly pleased with our tryline defence which was brilliant. We had players willing to make those important one on one tackles.

"I know that we let them in for a bit of a soft try early on in the game but we bounced back and bounced back strongly. For our defensive work I'd give is seven or eight from 10 - which is a high mark for me!"

While expressing his satisfaction with the way the attack function Terzis pointed out: "We probably didn't make the most of our opportunities. I think we could have picked up two or three more tries and of course we had another disallowed. That's becoming a weekly occurence with us. I was a bit dubious about the decision I thought it was a fair try.

"There were other hard calls against us today when we were in attack."