Leigh RMI 1 Northwich 1 by Martyn Hindley: LEIGH RMI's Conference destiny lies in five different stadiums on Saturday afternoon after they failed to polish off the challenge of Northwich at Hilton Park.

Victory over their Cheshire rivals would have almost guaranteed immunity from the Unibond nosedive but, despite Ian Monk's eighth minute strike, Leigh's dip in second half concentration allowed the spoils to be shared.

Monk is the man of the moment at Leigh, so it was fitting that he broke the deadlock with the games' first foray into the attacking third of the field.

With Vics' awaiting the award of a free-kick for a foul on Neil Campbell, Neil Prince's cross skipped across the bowels of the goalmouth virtually unnoticed and the former Morecambe wide man ambled in to slide the loose ball home.

There could have been further rings on the RMI abacus had Mark Ford's overhead kick not been cancelled out by an offside flag and had Prince not been foiled by Ben Connett as he tried to wrap his thighs around an awkwardly bouncing through ball.

Connett was the salvation for the visitors late on in the game when Ford snatched at a neat pass from sub Ged Courtney only to see the netminder resiliently standing his ground.

In between times, Jimmy Quinn's men had deservedly gone level through Johnny Allen.

RMI now go to Rockingham Road for Saturday's finale -- home of the already-relegated Kettering Town -- knowing that they can still conceivably stay up with all three results going their way.

Conversely, even victory may not be enough.

"I'm very disappointed with the performance", said frustrated boss Mark Patterson.

"I can only do so much and tell the players what to do and sometimes they aren't doing it. They are very inconsistent and that makes

life difficult.

"We know that if we had won today we would have only needed a draw on Saturday but now we have to win. You can only blame the poor pitch so far because we knew what it was like and had to go and put the performance in to win. We didn't do that."

RMI's hair-tearing day was complete when Wayne Maden was sent off for a second crunching foul in injury-time.