spot on sal. even a little bit more thought and effort would see us top of the pile and home games all the way to the grand final. as it is a monumental effort is needed and i'm not sure we either have what it takes or enough left in the tank

I agree completely!

regards,
Shaun Wane, 2013

Have you ever lost FIVE Challenge Cup finals and had to face constant questions about whether you'd ever win it? Have you had to walk up the steps at Wembley and walk past the trophy on those losing efforts? Will the next 30/40/50 years of your life when talking about how great your career was and how you were the most memorable side of your clubs history be constantly ended with a "but.....you never won the CC at Wembley."

Very easy to underestimate the psychological side of playing sports when you aren't the one competing on it.

Given some fans wanted us NOT to reach the final at season start because they couldn't bear another lost at Wembley, consider what the players mindset was regarding that competition.

If we don't rest players for the Bradford & London games I back us to win both comfortably. Remember we lost both by less than one score, and at London led comfortably before the kids crumbled in the face of a determined fightback.

Win those games and we're 2nd with a chance to win the LLS next week. That's not 'poor form over a season', that's decisions taken to rest the first team en masse in two specific games to ensure a win at Wembley. A strategy that to the seeming disappointment of some posters, worked.

The defeats you're complaining about are:

-4 point loss away at Saints
-4 point loss to Wigan at MW (following wins against Cas, Wigan & Saints on consecutive weekends)
-2 point loss to Huddersfield with half a team out, perfectly good try disallowed to let Giants win
-2 point loss away to Wakefield (9 players injured)

So the 'poor performance throughout the season' being complained about is a margin of 16 points over 4 games, three away from home, three against members of the top 5, two of which were played with significant injury burdens.

Now I'll give you the 24-6 loss away at Wire was the result of poor performance. Losing at home to Saints - we were a man down. Away at Wigan? Tough assignment played by a team who gave 150% trying to keep our LLS prospects alive at home to Saints and simply didn't have the gas in the tank to win.

A season performance will be impacted by multiple factors - ours potentially more than others - and trying to identify a trend across a run of games runs the risk of the classical logical fallacy - that big & general explanations are better than ones that look at specific examples and incidents. So let's look at them.

9 Defeats total

-2 due to massive resting of players (Bradford H, London A)
-2 due to huge injury crises (Huddersfield H, Wakefield A)
-1 due to playing 60 mins a man down (Saints H)
-1 due to having played 60 mins a man down the week after a final (Wigan A)

3 Poor performances - Wigan (MW), Warrington (A), Saints (A).

All tough games, all ones we realised defeat was a possibility.

If you want to argue about those three games and Mac's selections, tactics & motivations, feel free. but don't ignore specific factors, controllable & not, that have affected our final league position.

We'll rest the entire first team for Hull next week and lose. But the week's rest it buys us will be worth it in the playoffs.

but you don't play professional sport so how would you know??

there was, i think, 9 weeks between the QF and SF. the cup should have put to one side for at least 6/7 weeks

I understand your dilemma, I really do. You've become so accustomed to witnessing mediocrity in this SL competition for so long that justifying a 6th placed finish comes naturally.

6th out of 14 where 8 are whipping boy SL rabble clubs, and of those 8 whipping boy SL rabble clubs, 2 of them absolute basket cases who have been relegated. And Leeds managed to toss it off and lose to both of them, including one who lost every other game they played.

You keep justifying that 6th placed finish by whatever means.

Thankfully, it'll be the last season you (or anyone else) are able to do so.

and thats how it should be. we want intensity every week. you always get odd blow outs but we want more leeds v saints or leeds v cas games

I don't know, but I'm not foolish enough to dismiss it and think teams can just click like that.

Can the posters on here HONESTLY say they always performed whenever they played sports, RL or other? Does getting paid and being classified as a professional mean you have a control over your mind and the tricks your brain can play with you when you play?

Regardless of what people think, nobody ever wants to lose when they play sports, whatever the sport is. I play golf quite a lot which I think is a good sport to play to realise the effect the mental side can have on your performance, on days when it's not going right for me I often try too hard and overthink what I'm going and it can lead to more errors and bad shots.

I agree but the difference between first and second half of the season is massive. Nobody has mentioned ageing legs in key positions bug I think that's been a factor

No one has mentioned doomed.

Since the end of May, nearly for months we have played 12 league fixtures, a quarter final against a championship side, and a semi and final in two weeks.

Of the 12 league fixtures we won 4 and drew one. Two of those and the draw we were extremely lucky to get anything. That isn't a balancing act or anywhere near acceptable, it is shocking for a top side.

Had we not beat Catalans with the last minute penalty, which we shouldn't, we would be one point in front of them, the seventh placed team. Nobody would argue Catalans have had a decent year, and I bet no one at Catalans would be silly enough to try.

The league form has been poor, and the cup is just an excuse. We have been in CC final plenty of times previously, and never been this bad in league.

It might not be accepted by some, but in the league we have been poor, and it is not to do with the cup. The point is next year you have to finish top four to have a go at the top prize, not top eight. McDermot in his coaching career has managed that once. We all know one off matches we can win, but to get that chance from next year, you have to be able to handle a 27 round league campaign first. Something based on our last few years we struggle to do.

It has gone dodgy in the 2nd half of the season but as I keep mentioning, McDermott himself admitted the side got Wembley fever as soon as they beat Saints in Round 5 and were given a favourable draw for the Quarters (even though they made hard work of it. From the end of April we were fairly certain of at least a Semi Final place in the competition that had continuously eluded this side.....can people honestly say a trip away to Belle Vue and The Hive would've seen their concentration and focus remain at top levels with Wembley in touching distance?

They are professional rugby players. They should always be focused.

Is it been suggested that come May time next year and we get an easy quarter final, that that will be the season ended for the league?

The cup wasn't the problem at all for why we will finish 6th. Two defeats to Saints which we should have won, and two defeats to Wigan are as much why we are where we are, as results against Bradford and London are.

The attitude in the club and the squad management seriously needs to change next year with the new format. It is laughable the excuses used for this club, when poor little Castleford, with much less squad strength, and the team who also got to Wembley, and only second time in 28 years, could still manage to put up a better league campaign than us.

If Leeds rested 'the first team en masse' V Bradford what status are you affording to the following (listed in squad number order) who all played - Hardaker, Jones-Bishop, McGuire, Burrow, Leuluai, Aiton, Jones-Buchanan, Delaney, Kirke, Achurch, Briscoe, Sutcliffe, Singleton.

One of the obvious absentees was unavailable through suspension.

No you're missing the point. They didn't get distracted because they had a chance to win just A cup. They had a chance to win the cup that had eluded them for 10 years, the trophy that was thought of as the missing piece. To think of it as something that could distract them every year from now on is foolish.....can't believe people will try and play dumb/stubborn and try and ignore how significant winning that particular competition was to the careers of those players.



How did Castleford get on at Wembley?

It doesn't matter how they got on. The fact is they have much less resources, yet followed the same path, yet had a better league campaign. If what you are suggesting is true, then you are saying the Castleford players were much more professional than ours. Am not convinced I agree with that.

We have finished 6th in the poorest standard Super League I can remember. Disgraceful. Now the Golden generation have their much sought after Challenge Cup medals they can all retire gracefully to Belle Vue or Odslum and we need to build a new team now along with a coach who encourages attacking football and not the dross he has been serving up for years.

I think it really does matter how they got on at Wembley.

Funny thing is, last year an improved league placing was dismissed seen as we'd taken an early exit in the CC compared to previous years and was 'proof' that this team couldn't be relied upon to come good in the important games. This year we win the thing and lower league placing is the focus of people's complaints!

It's laughable the flip-flopping hypocrisy of people's mindset.

Regarding Castleford, they do have a chance to win the LLS next week IF Saints slip up, if only Cas had won one more game it'd be in their hands........remind me of the team they put out at Warrington the week before Wembley?

Lol. I sometimes wonder if some people actually understand what sport is.

It does matter how they got on ! They came second without a trophy. With or without the resources .They even had a relative easier journey in Batley, Sheffield and Widnes. In the league they may pick up the peanut dish if results go for them. With 2 main trophies to pick up in a season I know which ones and a lot of other Leeds fans would like them to lift

The 5 teams above us have all given much more value for money for their season ticket holders than us, when was the last time you walked away from a league game home or away thinking what a great performance that was. We have played a certain brand of rugby which means the game is going to be tight and more often than not we have come out worse. I have had enough of watching a McDermott coached team now and unless he changes his style of play or brings in a number 2 who does then I fear he is going to be out of a job because the paying public won't keep rocking up each week to watch the drivel he keeps serving up.

Meh. who cares. Next season is a different format. Why are we judging this seasons placing on next seasons format? So we wouldn't qualify finishing 6th? Well I never! Of course we'll have to improve to get in the top four but this season was still the old format so wasn't that important overall. Has any of the top 6 fielded their best possible side every game? Maybe Saints with their horrendous injury list (I don't know for sure) but Wigan,Wire, Cas etc have rested players.
We know it's a flawed system but it is what it is. It has hopefully been addressed and next season we will see games taken more seriously. If not, then we can judge but I can't see us fielding some of the sides we have this season.
Now cue all the desponds bemoaning the lack of opportunities for the youngsters half way through 2015! You just know it's going to happen!

Leeds -
Played 26
Won 15
Drawn 2
Lost 9

Of those 9 losses all but 2 (the recent Wigan game & Wire away) have been by 6 points or less.
Saints away 14-10
Wigan @ Etihad 18-14
Warrington away 24-6
Huddersfield home 22-24
Wakefield away 16-14
Bradford home 14-20
London away 40-36
Saints home 12-13
Wigan away 21-6

Our win/loss is roughly similar to Saints and Wigan last season.

We've won the cup and done pretty well in the league, a more competitive league than for many years.

The point is we have only had to finish in the top 8 these last few years which we have always done. The fact we haven't been in the top 4 is meaningless as that was not a requirement. BM has been able to rest players for the semi and final knowing that if we were to lose, which we did, we were still in the playoffs.
It is unfair to criticise BM for playing to the rules.

It doesn't matter how they got on at all. They are a much smaller club with less resources. We are one of four or five clubs who are expected to win it. Castleford fans expectations will be no more than a semi. They reached that cup final for only second time in 28 years. They exceeded their expectations regardless, and despite that they have out performed us in the league and outperformed any expectations they possibly could have had, despite resting players more times in the campaign than we did, yet resting players is apparently why we had a poor league campaign.

A club like Cas picking up a league leaders shield is a much bigger achievement than a club like us winning a Challenge cup, regardless of the value of each trophy.

I will repeat again, but for a very lucky last minute win against Catalans, we would be one point, one point, in front of them, the seventh placed club. Would anyone really say Catalans have had a good year?

It wouldn't even have taken as much as we have done in previous league campaigns to have finished top, let alone top two. Yet we end up the sixth worst team over 27 games. That is poor.

Haven't you got any houses to haunt?



If Cas win the LLS, and I hope they do, it will be a big achievement given where they were when Powell took over just like it was for Huddersfield to win it. However, I bet Huddersfield have more ambition now than to win the LLS in the current format. Fair play if you win it next year under the new format but at the moment it is a token reward IMO unless you back it up with a GF win.