Poor old down on their luck Leeds.

Every team has had injuries. The difference is the senior players leeds have had available and the back up players haven't been good enough. Bar Ward every single player has been available/played at some point this season. So this fallacy of ''when Leeds get x,x and y back they'll breeze the middle 8's'' is flawed. Because Leeds were so awesome when Hall, ablett et al played.

The floods can't be used as an excuse at this stage. Leeds best performance of the season was week 1. Since they have arguably gotten worse.

When you get down to it, when you really get into the nitty gritty there are 2 main reasons for leeds shockingly bad season so far.

- The senior players have played poorly, really poorly. Many many times leeds, despite injuries have fielded a team capable of far greater performances than they have churned out.

- The squad has been left with big holes this year which have been exposed through injuries. I said last season that leeds needed someone else at halfback and hooker because one injury to mcguire or falloon and leeds would struggle. But people judged it on numbers and said ''burrow, mcguire, sutcliffe, lilley falloon - 5 players to cover 3 positions, we'll be fine''. Well those people were wrong, very wrong. But the lack of quality is massive. Mcguire and burrow are past their best, lilley is a rookie and I don't even know if sutcliffe is good enough.

It was an oversight from up top. Sinfield announced he was leaving early so there was plenty of time to sign someone. To expect mcguire to both take over the captaincy and have the main responsibility of being creator and organizer has badly affected his game.

No bad luck. This is our own doing. Super league is so competitive now that if you miss a beat you find yourself at the bottom. I look around and I don't see any bad teams, apart from us. To put this down to injuries and flooding not only harms us this season, but for future seasons if we are going to build another championship winning team.

We've won 1 out of the last 12 games.

Oh...

Absolutely correct but unfortunately some people can still see last year's success and won't criticize however bad things get. 1 lucky win in the pouring rain against 11 (sometimes) humiliating defeats. But no1 will ever win 3 trophies attitude is why things continue to be swept under the carpet!

It is an excuse.

We'd have won a hell of a lot more than 3 if we had half of first team back.

But you are correct, we still overlooked strengthening in some key areas and hopefully we do learn from this for next season. Time will tell.

“He that is good for making excuses is seldom good for anything else.”

Depends on your outlook if you view them as "excuses" or "factors"

Should've done better yes but we obviously have other factors all adding up.

I think with tus getting injuries to first teamers probably hurts us a bit more because of our style/set-up relays heavily on our starters starting and coming up with key plays whereas a team like Wigan are set up so they can interchange injured players without it having too big an affect.

You could say this is a flaw with our club but it's probably why we've been so successful as well in the past and potentially what's stopped Wigan from winning either of the two big prizes in 3 of Wane's 4 years.

I think that's one of the reasons why the coach is getting a lot of stick, and rightly so. We're 19 games into the season and still apparently waiting for the recovery of everyone to show any kind of form. Injuries can excuse some defeats for sure, and lets be honest after last year most people would have settled (albeit with a few moans) for a mid-table snooze-fest this year, especially with Sinfield and Peacock leaving.

What I find hard to take is that so long into the season the defence looks like an amateur RL lineup on a bad day and the attack is completely directionless. To the point that we're bottom of the league with a bullet with both the worst points for and against. Basically we have been awful all year. No injuries can excuse that.

Although McD and GH made a huge error in not replacing Sinfield and not offering Aiton more money, we'd be in the top 8 if it wasn't for injury. We would have beaten Wire on the opening day if ZH could kick. We then lost 3 players in the Widnes massacre, and the rest is history.

As somebody elsr said on here, look what happened to Wigan at Wakey when half their team was out. Don't care what anybody says, when you've got 8-10 players missing who would start every game, it does affect results

Catalans had almost the same number out as Leeds and a similar number of key personnel - they still managed to get over the line.

Injuries do play a part but not to the extent they have at Leeds this season.

They played the Giants two weeks running - fielded a stronger side week 2 and got beat by a larger margin!!

Injuries aren't the issue. Look at the state of our tackling. None committed, heartless and soft.

The UKIP supporting ex-pat will be here soon to derail the thread claiming that any heartless, soft and non-committed performances from the players is nothing to do with the coach.

Did that really happen though. Wigan had eleven in, that I would say make their 17 regularly enough - Sarginson, Charnley, Gildart, Smith, Clubb, Powell, Mossop, J Tompkins, Isa, Tautai and Sutton. Outside those Burke and Tierney I'd certainly heard of leaving Gregson, Bretherton, Wells and Higginson.



Start - as in the run on side excluding subs?

That would be a problem which games did it happen in?

No one disputes Leeds have been effected by injuries but taking off the blue and amber specs for a minute so have the teams they've faced. I've tried looking at a cumulative count on matchday squad numbers and by that measure Leeds have been nearer their optimum as often as they've been further away (SL Regular Rounds 8 - 8 with 1 draw - Wigan Away)

No doubt there will be anomalies (such as Ferres wearing 26) but it's an indicator at least that Leeds are not alone in this regard.

Something needs to change between now and the end of the season for leeds to be safe from relegation.

Relying on injured players returning is flawed. More injuries may occur and as pointed out at the start, all bar ward have played or been available. In the past the likes of wakefield and wigan brought in new players and coach to change their momentum.

GH has already stated the coach won't change. So SOMEONE is going to have to be signed to spark leeds in some way or give them a new impetus.

If you keep doing what you've always done, you can expect to have the same outcome. However if the quality of the players you have to work with suddenly declines (fault of the CEO) and you don't change the way you approach the game (fault of the coaching staff) then you must reappraise the way you want to play or suffer the consequences. I'm yet to see any positive impact on performances due to a reappraisal of the way we play to recognise the difference in the quality of the players. Of course it goes without saying that players missing or not performing to their potential will gave a negative impact, but the fundamentals are missing from the way we are trying to play this year, so it's hardly surprising that players are making more and more mistakes as the pressure builds. It's the specific job of the coaching staff to ensure that players are able to perform to their best and this simply isn't happening.

Games played:
Briscoe 4/19. 21%
Moon 10/19. 52%
Hall 7/19. 36%
McGuire 7/19. 36%
Falloon 8/19. 42%
Ablett 8/19. 42%
Ward 0/19. 0%
Delaney 10/19. 52%

8 players that Mac would surely have in his starting 13, and only 2 have got anywhere near half of all games this year. Then look at the others. JJB has missed 6, Cuthbertson has missed 5, Singleton missed 5, Garbutt missed 5, Ferres missed 5.

Our first choice 1-5 (arguably the most devastating back line in SL has played together TWICE.
1-7 (if you're still playing the squad numbers game) have played together ONCE (the opening day.)
8-13 (excluding Ward) has played together THREE times.

Aside from Watkins who has been ever present, the next highest appearance makers are:
Sutcliffe- 18 games(number 14- remember the squad numbers game)
Lilley- 18 games (number 25)
Handley- 17 games (number 22)
Hardaker- 17 games (number 1, but he wants out)
Burrow- 17 games (number 7)
Mullally- 16 games (number 20)

No team has been affected as badly as us with injuries.

Good post.

These stats and analysis clearly show our horrendous ongoing injury list has been a major factor that has affected performance so far this year. Even when some of the long term injured have returned they need a few matches to get match fit so the effect is even more prolonged. With so many sitting on the sidelines and others unable to train between matches must have made the coaches job impossible to have truly effective practice sessions too.

Having had to play without our main playmaker for 12 games (more if you factor in getting match fit) has hit us hard too especially in the tight games we lost due to poor last tackle options. While opponents have won tight games due to having their playmaker(s) available.

I agree that no other team will have been as badly affected

Yawn zzzzz....... yadda yadda. Poor Mr.McDermott ...too many shiite players that are too stupid/deaf/disobedient to carry out his excellent game plan and instructions on tightening up the ruck defence (that is what you're saying isn't it? Effectively)

,

In your opinion yes (and it may even be true) but without the comparable figures from the other SL teams I guess we'll never know. I've tried with squad numbers which show Leeds being closer to their optimum 1 to 17 than their opponents in eight SL Regular Round games - eight where they are further away and one drawn, hasn't stopped them losing 14 of 17.

I thought you weren't keen on selective stats or is it just the selective stats that highlight how poor the McDermott record is now he has lost his two lieutenants.

1. Sam Tomkins 4/19
9 McIlorum 3/19. (and our reserve hooker, Luke Waterworth also out for the season)
11 Joel Tomkins 7/19
12 Farrell 8/19
6 Williams 9/19
13 O'Loughlin 9/19
8 Crosby 5/19
10 Flower 10/19
3 Gelling 11/19
Plus lots of others missing 5 or so games, Pretty comparable, I'd say. We've used 31 players so far.

That's a flawed method as that would assume that everyone from 1-17 is as vital a miss as others.

A - Saints are only missing two players Roby and Walmsley

B - Saints are missing 4/5 players but they aren't those two mentioned above

Think I'd prefer option B to be honest.

Just basing on numbers anyway only tells half a story because different teams are stronger in different positions, we for example will miss more when our back 5 is depleted than others because we have more match winners there imo.

I think this puts to bed the notion that Leeds have been more impacted by injuries than other sides, I bet if you did the same exercise for Catalans you would end up with a similar synopsis.

It begs the question why are Wigan/ Catalans near the top of the table and Leeds at the bottom?

And when we played Wakefield and Hull KR at home they had more players missing than us, but still beat us.

Wrong again. Wakey game. They were missing B.Tupou, Gibson, Owen, England, A.Tupou. We were missing Hall, McGuire, Galloway, Ablett and Ward.
1-13 Hull KR were missing Mantellato and Kelly. Also, Salter. But would he play ahead of Cockayne? No. We were missing Briscoe, Hall, Ward.