THOSE at Leeds with memories of a 74-6 crushing by Wigan in the 1992 Premiership semi-finals and Martin Offiah romping in for ten tries, watched with particular relish as the Rhinos crossed the Warriors’ line 13 times in a 70-0 drubbing, the worst defeat in Wigan’s 110 years. Two supporters flung their replica shirts on the pitch in disgust at the most shambolic display served up in the famous cherry-and-white colours since relegation to the old second division in 1979.

Thoughts of revenge must take a back seat to regaining a semblance of respectability when Ian Millward takes his bedraggled charges to his former St Helens employers in the Powergen Challenge Cup quarter-finals on Sunday. If Saturday night’s massacre at Headingley was not bad enough, Terry Newton’s fitness is in doubt after he hobbled off, Liam Botham is cup-tied and Jerry Seuseu faces possible disciplinary action for taking out Ryan Bailey, the Leeds prop.

Not that the few experienced heads left did anything other than imitate decapitated chickens in the face of Leeds’s highly-skilled precision. The youngsters fast-tracked from the academy and under-21 sides, because of unprecedented injury problems, were not up to the job. Rarely have a side in the modern era looked so physically ill-equipped, yet Millward’s dilemma is that he has nowhere else to turn in the week of his emotional return to Knowsley Road.

Instead of going into meltdown, he wearily picked over the wreckage. “The issue for us is what we’re going to do to get a team on the field (away to St Helens). We’re dealt these cards and I’ll see if I can juggle them around a bit to come up with something different,” Millward, who has presided over one win and three defeats since he took over last month, said.

The cup final in Cardiff is a pipedream on the evidence of Wigan’s slide into a relegation dogfight. Maurice Lindsay, the chairman, told a section of Wigan fans that some youngsters were not yet up to Super League standard. “We can’t get reinforcements until next year, so we have to soldier on,” he said. “We’re going into a cup match with hardly a team at all. It’s a test of everyone’s mettle — mine, Ian’s, the fans’ and, most of all, the players.”

St Helens, wary in squaring up to their old coach, will watch the video and lick their lips at the flimsiness of Wigan’s tackling — “once the floodgates opened, it was every man for himself,” Millward said — and the lack of a creative spark.

Leeds, the league leaders, were merciless tormentors in moving three points clear of St Helens, superbly marshalled by Andrew Dunemann from acting half back. Danny McGuire’s second try exceeded Wigan’s previous record defeat, a 58-3 hammering on the same ground in 1972.