Wigan rugby league coach Shaun Wane tipped Leigh to pick up plenty of wins on their return to Super League but Centurions boss Neil Jukes was left disappointed by their 20-0 derby defeat.
There were early signs of encouragement as Leigh went in search of a first win over their neighbours for 33 years but, although they trailed only 6-0 at half-time on Saturday (AEDT), they failed to get over the Wigan line and were eventually undone by the brilliance of England five-eighth George Williams.
"We are not going to win many games with nil," Jukes said. "We went into our shell too much.
"We were worried too much about the wet weather and the greasy ball. Some of the errors that we came up with were just fundamental ones and on that back of that we had to do far too much defending.
"We never challenged them enough. Our attack was way off. We needed to be braver with the ball and we weren't.
"It's not the end of the world, I'm just disappointed we didn't show ourselves in a better light."
In posting a 19th successive win over Leigh, Wigan have now joined Castleford at the top of the Super League table with three wins out of three, much to the delight of Wane.
"I'm very happy, especially to nil a team like Leigh who can play," he said.
"After our first two games I said we needed to concentrate on our defence and we did.
"I want to pay a lot of respect to Leigh, who will definitely win loads of games this year.
"They are a good team, very physical and experienced. It's the first time we've played them for many years so they were looking forward to it and so were we."
Williams was named man of the match after scoring an opportunist try and kicking perfectly to create two for centre Anthony Gelling, while full-back Morgan Escare, who kicked four goals from five attempts, also caught the eye of his coach.
Wigan's win came at a cost ahead of next Thursday's Grand Final re-match against Warrington, with wingers Joe Burgess and Lewis Tierney going off with knee injuries and prop Ryan Sutton sustaining an eye injury in a clash of heads.
Meantime, Wakefield's Jacob Miller scored a penalty try to snatch a 16-12 victory from jaws of defeat at St Helens.
All the signs looked as though Saints had done enough to bag the points after centre Mark Percival powered over for a second-half double, but Keiron Cunningham's side could not finish the job and Trinity struck right in the nick of time.
In the dying minutes Miller pushed a kick in-goal and the officials judged Saints full-back Tommy Makinson had interfered with the Miller enough to stop him from scoring.
The call was met with rage at the terraces of the Totally Wicked Stadium after it looked a dubious call.
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