The wild results that made Super League so compelling

Leigh's win at Wigan is the lowest-scoring fixture in Super League history - but that was not a reflection on its quality

Super League's opening weekend of the 2025 season had a stark contrast in results across the first six fixtures of the campaign.

Reigning champions Wigan - off the back of a history-making quadruple-winning season in 2024 - played out an incredible record-breaking scoreless 80 minutes against town rivals Leigh, who eventually won 1-0 in golden point extra time.

That low-scoring affair was a total contrast from St Helens' whopping 82-0 win over Salford Red Devils just two days later.

After a remarkable gameweek came to an end, BBC Sport looked into the archive to see where these results stack up in comparison to some notable fixtures in years gone by.

Have there been other low-scoring wins?

The scorecard for Leigh's emphatic win over Wigan last week had just one name on there - Gareth O'Brien, who kicked the decisive drop-goal to gift the Leopards victory after an astonishing 80 minutes which resulted in the first 0-0 draw in the competition's 29-year history.

"I got my head down, got my foot through it and it went over," he said to BBC Radio Manchester of his match-winning kick.

"For it to be 0-0 it just shows what sort of game it was. The defences came out on top."

The low-scoring affair at the Brick Community Stadium is not the only time tough defence has decided a crucial game of rugby league and resulted in a scoreless 80 minutes, however.

Halifax took on Hull in a Challenge Cup semi-final in March 1988 which ended 0-0 and required a replay to decide who would reach that season's final at Wembley.

Fax narrowly edged out the Airlie Birds four days later in another tight affair, running out 4-3 winners at Elland Road, before they were well beaten 32-12 by Wigan in the final a month later in front of 94,000 in London.

Fast forward nine years and Salford - in their first game in Super League - kicked off their top-flight campaign with a 4-0 win over Castleford at the Willows in March 1997.

Until last week's remarkable fixture in Wigan, that was the joint record lowest scoring Super League fixture, alongside St Helens' 4-0 win at a muddy Celtic Crusaders in March 2009, Saints' edgy 4-0 win over Castleford in 2019 and Warrington's dour try-less 4-0 victory against Hull FC in 2022.

Just because a fixture is low-scoring does not indicate lack of effort - indeed, St Helens' supporters paid tribute to the Crusaders at the end of their 2009 win, cheering the Welshmen off the pitch for their endeavour.

Saints' win against Castleford 10 years later was a well-earned victory off the back of a chastening defeat at Wembley by Warrington in the Challenge Cup the week before, however it did herald the beginning of a remarkable era of dominance at the turn of the decade which saw the club win four successive Super League titles.

These results were in contrast to Warrington's 2022 triumph over Hull, however, with then-head coach Daryl Powell doing little to hype up the result in the aftermath of their victory.

"Both teams looked nervous, the crowd were nervous, the coach was nervous and we just needed to come out of the other side of it with a victory," he said.

Salford's other drubbings in the Super League era

St Helens ran in a whopping 15 tries to demolish Salford Red Devils 82-0 on Saturday to register the biggest winning margin in Super League history.

That win did come against a Salford side which named just 16 players in their squad, including eight debutants, because of a salary cap imposed with their takeover still to be ratified.

But what fixture did Saints' impressive victory dethrone? Well, at the turn of the millennium both Leeds and Bradford won by an 80-point margin, with poor old Salford on the receiving end of one of those results.

In 1999, Leeds defeated Huddersfield 86-6 with Iestyn Harris scoring four tries and Paul Sterling also registering a hat-trick on a dismal day for the Giants.

Almost 12 months later in June 2000, Jamie Peacock claimed a hat-trick and Robbie Hunter-Paul scored four tries of his own as Bradford almost broke the 100-point barrier with their 96-16 thumping of Salford.

In fact, the Red Devils have some unwanted pedigree with such results - having also been on the end of a 70-6 hiding at Wigan in 1993.

In the past 10 years, Warrington have twice scored 80 points against an opponent - first against Wakefield in a whopping 80-0 win in 2015 and again three years later in a Super 8s contest against Hull FC when they ran out 80-10 winners.

"I hate looking for excuses but over the last month I think we have spent around two hours as a team training together, for the simple reason I don't have enough people. We have just got to suck it up at the moment," then-Wakefield boss James Webster said having, to his credit, faced the media after the defeat.

He received the backing of Trinity chairman Michael Carter in the aftermath, but left the club just a month later.

Wigan narrowly missed out on setting the record themselves in 2013 off the back of beating Hull KR 84-6 at Craven Park.

Cross-town rivals Leigh have also been on the end of a morale-depleting thrashing - having been hammered 78-4 by St Helens in 2005, in a game where a 17-year-old Chris Hill made his senior debut.

But what about a stalemate? In 1994, the highest scoring draw took place as Leeds drew 46-46 with Sheffield Eagles.

The Rhinos came from 12-20 down at half-time to claw back some glory in a remarkable second half which saw two tries scored in the final three minutes.