Leigh Sports Village

Leigh Sports Stadium

Leigh Sports Village

Sale Way

Leigh 

Greater Manchester

WN7 4JY

Sports Village Website

Leigh RMI / Genesis Wiki

Ground Number: 1091
Sunday 17th July 2022
Sweden 5-0 Portugal
Women's Euro 22 - Group C

LEIGH SPORTS VILLAGE - A BRIEF HISTORY

Leigh Sports Village is an £83 million multi-use sports, retail and housing development in Leigh, near Manchester. The centrepiece of the development is a 12,000-capacity stadium which is home to professional rugby league team Leigh Centurions, Manchester United's under-19 and under-23 teams and Manchester United Women. The complex also plays host to amateur rugby league club Leigh East and amateur athletics club Leigh Harriers, who both occupy dedicated facilities on the site. Other facilities on-site include the Leigh campus of Wigan and Leigh College, Leigh Sports Centre, which includes a gym, multi-use sports hall and swimming pool, a Holiday Inn Express hotel, a Morrisons supermarket and the Whistling Wren pub. The stadium opened at the end of 2008, the first game was a rugby match with a restricted capacity. A sell-out crowd of 4,714 saw Leigh versus Salford on 28 December 2008. The official capacity is 12,000 and this was reached for a sporting event on 10th August 2014 for a Widnes Vikings v Castleford Tigers game in the Tetley Challenge Cup final. On Saturday 21 June 2014, Sir Elton John and his band played in front of 17,000 fans in one of only three announced UK venues for his 2013/14 tour.

The only team to represent Leigh at any kind of serious level was Leigh RMI, later to become Leigh Genesis. The club was an imported one, having started out as Horwich RMI in 1896. They spent 98 years in their original location, playing at Grundy Hill from 1914 until they moved in 1995. The stadium had a famously sloping pitch and a capacity of 5,000 with 500 seats. Whilst there, highlights included some mid-table finishes in the NPL Premier (at the time, the second tier of Non-League football), a couple of FA Cup 1st Round appearances (most recently losing 3-0 to Blackpool in 1982), and an FA Cup Quarter Final appearance in 1991. They sold their stadium for housing in 1995 and decamped to Leigh, traditionally a rugby area.

The move did initially prove successful, they won promotion from the NPL Division 1 in 1997 as runners-up to Radcliffe Borough. They were then NPL Premier champions at the turn of the millennium, winning promotion to the Conference, now known as the National League. Their best-ever season came in 2001/02 with an excellent 5th place finish. During this time, they reached the FA Cup 1st Round a further three times, famously taking Fulham to a replay in 1997 and getting on Sky TV in the process. They even made a couple of appearances in the Football League Trophy at the start of the new millennium, following a short-lived experiment by the Football League to allow some non-league teams in. It wasn't to last, however. With Leigh being known as a rugby league town, and the numerous well-known football sides on the club's doorstep, not only Wigan Athletic, but Blackburn Rovers, Manchester City, and Manchester United, Leigh RMI averaged attendances of approximately 250 people per game in 2007.

 

They originally shared at Leigh's old rugby ground, but although the rot had started to set in, the move to Leigh Sports Village was the killer, due to high costs. After a few seasons of struggle, they were relegated from the Conference in 2005. Results did not improve, even with a name change to Leigh Genesis in 2008, meant to represent a fresh start following relegation from the Conference North. A second consecutive relegation followed and despite bounding nack with a 6th place finish in the NPL Division 1 North, they were forced to move into a groundshare with Atherton Laburnam Rovers for their final season. This resulted in another poor season, with the club suffering a third relegation in four years. With no ground to call home, the ownership opted to wind the club up at the end of the 2010/11 season, rather than play in the North West Counties League. In May 2012, the club officially announced the re-launch of the senior team for the 2012–13 season. was playing in the South Lancashire Counties Football League, a men's Sunday League affiliated with the Lancashire FA. They have a commitment to 'Football For All' and mainly concentrate on providing opportunities for youngsters these days.

MY VISIT

Originally on this day, I was struggling to find a game, due to the lack of options. I usually despise Sundays at work and the rare ones that I have off are not much better. Originally, the front-runner was Tavistock v Plymouth Argyle. However, there was no backup and the ease of getting about on public transport in that neck of the woods made me look elsewhere. The Futbology app can be very useful at times and this was very true on this occasion. I found out that there was a women's Euros game between Sweden & Portugal at Leigh Sports Village and there was very little chance of that not going ahead. Originally, I was tempted to do a game at Clitheroe at 1 PM, however, I'd have to sacrifice the first 20 minutes of the game at Leigh, or pay for a pricey taxi. In the end, I decided to stick with the one game and hope that something more suitable would come up.

It was a pretty hideous experience booking the ticket on the UEFA website, with far too many questions and far too many steps, but I got there in the end. The same was true of the app which required all of the same details again, plus a scan of your ID. Totally unlike the easy-to-use processes at most clubs where you buy a ticket and they send you a QR code to scan. The madness extended to the bag policy - no bigger than A4 which meant that I would have to pack very carefully and leave my Chromebook at home. The people at Leigh Sports Village were super-helpful in sending me the information but I can't help but think that UEFA's intention is to make going to a game as difficult and unpleasant as possible for supporters. In the lead-up to the game, after saying you couldn't take any food or drink into the ground, they bowed and said you could take in one small bottle of water with the top removed, due to the high temperatures.

The day of the game came and I was staying overnight in Blackpool. There had been extremely noisy seagulls all night but despite a poor night's sleep, I felt fine. There was no hot water in the room and the shower didn't work so I made do with boiling a kettle and having a wash. Just before 9, we left, stopping at Greggs on the way to the coach station. We were well in time for our coach which left promptly at 10. We made good progress and got to Manchester at around 11.15. After grabbing a quick drink, we headed to the football museum. It was a place I'd been a few times before, but it was still a good way to while away an hour or so. It was ten minutes walk to our bus stop and we got the 1 pm bus to Leigh. We were there within 45 minutes and Colin wanted to pop into some shops and the fan park. It was then the Thomas Burke Wetherspoons my 228th in the chain. I opted for Chicken Jalfrezi and chips with a pint of Thatchers. It was then another drink, something different - a Dead Man's Fingers pineapple rum with San Pellegrino Lemon. From there it was about 20 minutes to the ground. I had a pint of Inch's outside, at a fiver, not outrageous for a tournament. It cooled me down as Colin was giving off heat like nobody's business. I sorted my bags to comply with stadium regulations which the decent stewards didn't take that seriously. Once in the ground, I just got my drawstring bag out of my back pocket and repacked it to something more manageable. Sweden fans had vastly outnumbered their Portuguese counterparts, their support rather impressive. Sweden is a place I'd love to visit one day, maybe next June to finish the season.

The Swedes ran out convincing 5-0 winners in a one-sided game. I'll try and include the match report above. The game was played in sweltering conditions and as a result, I decided to sack off the trip to Sheffield tomorrow. We needed sustenance and so headed to McDonald's with me getting a wrap of the day meal. The main thing was the drink which went down well. We headed to the bus station, having to wait 20 minutes for the bus which wasn't too bad for a Sunday. It took around 45 minutes to get back into Manchester where we headed for a soft drink at Tesco. We then walked to the Printworks and had a game of bowling and a couple of games of air hockey with me successful on all three fronts. Colin then had a long chat with fellow hopper Dan before we went to The Moon Under Water for a drink. It wasn't going to be enough to send me to sleep but I was winding things down.

We then headed back to the coach station with us there half an hour before departure. Annoyingly the coach was full but at least I could sit next to someone I know. The station was boiling and I was hoping it wasn't a sign of things to come. It was an extremely cramped journey but at least the air conditioning was spot on. I barely got a wink of sleep all night and was looking forward to my bed. We were back in London at Golders Green at 5.50 but it was a much-reduced service due to the heat. After picking up Colin's bike at Chalfont with a 40-minute walk back to his flat where I picked up my car and drove home. I was back at 9 am and pretty much went straight to bed, sleeping until lunchtime. Despite the heatwave, I spent the afternoon typing my blogs with three fans keeping me cool.

THE GROUND

LEIGH SPORTS VILLAGE is primarily a rugby ground. It's still pretty decent though and has a seated capacity of 9,000 and a standing capacity of 3,000. The views and legroom are decent and it is well located at around 20 minutes from town. Food at the ground is the standard sort of thing you'd expect whilst the town has the standard range of chains. 

Leigh itself is not the easiest to get to on public transport. There is no train station but there is a reasonable bus service from Manchester. The first picture shows the construction of the stadium, taken around 2008.