A ground visibly struggling to haul itself into the 20th century, never mind the 21st; intimidatory atmosphere - not helped by the shaven headed, barrel chested security apes they deem necessary to patrol the bar; quite possibly the worst playing surface I've seen since Doncaster drained the deep end at Tattersfield.
Oh, and a team like an irresistable cannon that we were correctly lined up as fodder for.
Hopes of salvaging anything were blasted as early as the 6th minute whern Anderson strolled in. And with Leigh pulling away steadily as the half continued, we stood stunned as Hornets found new and interesting ways to concede tries.
That we were only 34 points adrift at half time says more about the conditions than anythihg else. Quite frankly it was a shambolic 40 minutes - the lowlight being Brendan O'Meara trading handbags...er punches with his opposite number and lucky to remain onthe field. Obviously the referee thought: why ruin a bad game?
The second half followed much the same pattern - but at a much reduced pace. Leigh - with foot obviously off the accelerator - made a mockery of the conditions with some tricksy passing and neat backing up. That they succeeded in adding only two tries is also misleading given the fact that they could have gone home at quarter past four and Hornets still would have failed to hold onto the ball long enough to score.
And so the day fizzled to a damp, cold standstill - echoing perfectly Hornets' state for most of the afternoon.
"Salford are next' sang the Leigh fans at the end, but whilst they can congratulate themselves on some excellent football under difficult conditions, they shouldn't be too keen to use us as a yardstick for their abilities.
Hornets were quite simply awful. On a lousy day all round, we struggled to find a man of the match, but Marlon Billy did nothing wrong and plenty that was fine, whilst Danny Sculthorpe stuck to the task to the death - even if he was guilty of trying too hard at times. Hardly the worst of crimes.
Not good preparation for the Cup as once again, in the space of a week, we go from '...great, Hunslet at home' to '.. uh, oh, Hunslet at Home". And, as Martin Hall prepared for some serious remedial work this week, we look for positives from this debacle.
We had some splendid chips with curry sauce, we didn't get threatened by one of the local nutters and the car was still there when we got back to it.
Not much consolation - but better than previous trips.