Super League owner Derek Beaumont has revealed that former NSW Blues and Kangaroos fullback Jarryd Hayne nearly signed with the club before his second stint in the NRL.
One of the most high-profile rugby league players during his playing days, Hayne became one of the NRL's best players during the 2000s and 2010s and won the 2009 Dally M Player of the Year award.
He would also go on to be one of the few NRL players to make the switch to the NFL (San Francisco 49ers) and even represented Fiji in Rugby Sevens.
Commonly referred to as the 'Hayne Plane', he also represented the NSW Blues on 23 occasions and the Australian Kangaroos (11 appearances) and Fiji (10 appearances) in the international arena.
Speaking on the club's YouTube channel, Beaumont was quizzed on who their biggest almost-signing was in the team's history.
Beaumont revealed that the club almost signed Hayne before he decided to return to the NRL in 2016.
“Jarryd Hayne, the one that got away,” he said on the Leigh Leopards' YouTube channel.
“I was really looking forward to it, it was done when he came back from American Football.
“Basically there was a wedding on the date when the contract was supposed to go through that morning.”
Instead of moving overseas to the Super League, Hayne returned to the NRL with the Gold Coast Titans (2016-17) before finishing his career with the Parramatta Eels (2018) in his second stint with the club.
More recently, Hayne successfully won his legal appeal, having his rape conviction quashed in the process.
This came after he was found guilty by a jury of two counts of sexual intercourse without consent in April 2023 relating to oral sex and the digital penetrations of a 26-year-old woman.