Cunningham: Leigh will try and batter us

St Helens coach Keiron Cunningham expects Leigh to come out firing against his team this Friday.

Leigh have lost their opening two games in Super League with defeats to Castleford and Leeds.

Cunningham believes the Centurions were a tad unlucky against the Rhinos.

“I thought Leigh did themselves justice against Leeds,” he said.

“The Cas game, Cas is a tough place to go and they got caught a little bit cold and Cas got some lucky tries on Leigh.

“They did get caught out cold and ended up chasing the game in the second half, they carried on pushing and working hard for each other and I knew it would be a different Leigh side that you saw against Leeds.

“They’ve got a proud record down there at Leigh and they’ve done a lot of good things for a few years and they’ve been beating the drum from the background and now they’re at the party now and they’re at the big dance and they’ve got a lot of pride at stake.

“Give or take a couple of passes and penalties they’d probably have beaten Leeds.

“It was a real close encounter and if ‘Tils’ would have managed to slip that ball it would have been a win for the Leigh side, so they’re going to come out firing and they’re going to come out with a lot more confidence.

Cunningham said Leigh will try to “batter” his side.

“Jukes has changed his side a lot compared to what it was the week before and it looked a lot more solid than what they had out there the week before,” he said.

“They’ll take a lot of pride in there and a lot of confidence out of that so they’re going to try and get us on friday night and thats the Leigh way. They come out the blocks and they try and batter you.

“We’re not a bad side ourselves, we’ve got a decent pack and we’ve got very entertaining outside backs so we’ll be going there with a set game plan, were going to stick to the game plan and hopefully we’ll do a decent job.”

Cunningham is expecting to only make one change with Louie McCarthy-Scarsbrook coming into the 17 to replace Joe Greenwood.