Leigh Leopards have left themselves a significant amount of salary cap space to play with should the right man come along. That’s the message from head of rugby Chris Chester, who refused to be drawn on speculation that the club could be interested in taking Salford Red Devils’ Marc Sneyd.

The Leopards have had something of a hectic off-season with a raft of first-team regulars moving onto pastures new at the end of the 2024 season. As such, 10 signings have been made leading into the new season with Adrian Lam’s squad taking on a very different look.

However, with Matt Moylan making the decision to retire, the club have been regularly linked to half-backs over the last few months. Sneyd is just the latest man rumoured, with Hull Live reporting interest from Hull FC, too, and while Chester hasn’t ruled out the possibility of signing a new pivot ahead of the campaign, he was non-committal when asked about the Salford man.

“I get sent stuff every other day with players who we’re linked with,” Chester told Serious About RL. “All I will say is that we have salary cap space available if the right person becomes available.

“I don’t want to talk about any other club’s players, everybody is well aware of what that situation is there [at Salford]. All I’m focused on is what we’ve got at this moment in time and what we have available for round one.

“We’ll take a day at a time. We’ve got a warm weather camp that we go on on Friday and just looking forward to getting away from the boys and getting to know every single one of them.

With rules changing regarding recruitment and when clubs can reach out to players elsewhere, contracts are already coming into focus in Super League. Leigh have nine players in the final year of their current deals and that includes star names Edwin Ipape and Lachlan Lam.Castleford Tigers confirm testimonial cancellation as weather claims another game

“There’s ongoing discussions with everybody, with players and with players agents as well,” Chester said when asked about retention.

“We’re up front with the players and we’ve explained which players we want to keep hold of and we’re fully aware that the rules have changed.

“We’re happy with the squad as it is for 2025 and discussions with players and player agents will carry on over the coming weeks. I don’t envisage massive changes in 2026.

“The recruitment is always just ongoing, everyone is pretty much done at this time of year but we have got significant cap space available should the right person become available for 2025. If not we’ll sit on that and wait to see what does become available. In terms of retention we want to keep all our players and we’re working hard behind the scenes to make sure we do that.”

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