Wigan Warriors lifted the Challenge Cup trophy yesterday, to complete a remarkable clean sweep. Wigan are the first side since St Helens in 2007 to hold all four major trophies concurrently, and look to be on the verge of another era of dominance.
Kruise Leeming joined Wigan in the close season, and has played an important role in their success this season. He scored a try in Wigan’s World Club Challenge win over the Penrith Panthers, and came off the bench in yesterday’s win over Warrington, adding impetus and go-forward after Warrington had made a fast start.
Leeming joined Wigan having had a difficult few years. He left Leeds Rhinos and Super League under a cloud, after requesting a move following a difference of opinion with head coach, Rohan Smith. He spent a period in the NRL with the Gold Coast Titans before joining Wigan.
Now, having lifted two pieces of silverware in his first few months at the Warriors, Leeming is glad to have joined a successful club.
Wigan Warriors share Leeming’s values
Speaking in the aftermath of yesterday’s win, Leeming expressed his pride at winning the club. He stated that, whilst he had won silverware elsewhere in his career, such as the Challenge Cup with Leeds, they had not always put the work in off the field to build a strong culture. That is not the case at Wigan. Leeming said:
“t’s a very special group of guys. I’ve been in positions before where I’ve been in champion teams and probably the work behind the scenes has not been put in. We get everything right here at Wigan and we deserve to be in the final and we deserve to win.
“And that’s not just talking about on the field, off the field with how we treat people, how we are as blokes, how we are as men. We’ve got everything spot on there so it would have been an anomaly for us not to win there today. I think we deserved it.”
“It’s just good to be a part of a club that’s got the same values as I’ve got. I could have come here and won them and still been unhappy, which sounds weird to some people, but I could have been if I were in an environment that didn’t have the same values as me and I didn’t get on with the lads either in the champion team, but being unhappy.”
Wigan to go back to drawing board after win
Leeming is pleased to have settled so quickly with the club, and that is largely thanks to how the other players have accepted him:
“The way that they’ve accepted me, the way they’ve improved me as a player and a person is everything that I wanted. That’s the reason for my decision. It was a massive decision coming back from NRL to come to the back of the Super League and to play for Wigan.
“The decision was what team is going to make me a better person and what team is going to make me a better player and ultimately they’ve come to the decision of Wigan and I’m so glad they did.”
Asked how Wigan will keep motivated, having achieved so much success, he explained that no one at the club will rest on their laurels:
“That’s the best thing about this team and this environment, we’ll go back to drawing board, you know, when we stop having a drink and stop celebrating, we will look at that game and see where we could have been better, whereas most teams will have probably watched that game and they’ve won and that’s it, that’s the ceiling.
“We know that there’s other things that we want to achieve, there’s other reasons why we’re playing and you never get bored of winning, you never get bored of being successful. If we played this game 100 times over and lift that trophy 100 times, the feeling that you get walking up those stairs never gets boring on you, you never get tired of it.”