I agree.

If a young player has to work harder and show some additional desire to get past him for a place in the squad then it's not a bad thing at all.

Attitude and hard work is a minimum requirement in fairness.

If you or I played for Leeds we would give our all for the cause. I know deep down im not worthy of a contract though.

Lets not make him out to be better than he is tho. A player like Sam Walters has the potential to be an international down the line and offers much more than Donaldson who in truth makes 10m of ground a game.

Agree he's a solid squad player with a lot of pop (pound for pound) in his tackling. Also agree with Marty's point about lack of metres. I suspect he also doesn't play many minutes, although the minutes he does play are high intensity.

He does an OK job for us in truth but no more than that.

I think that's a bit harsh.

Bottom line is that Sinny and Agar rate him, hence the extension. Some of us see his value, some don't. Not much point discussing further......

that ends that then

Everyone seems to rate him in some way shape or form. The question is how much do sinny and agar rate him (hopefully not enough to pick him regularly if we something that resembles a fit pack of forwards).

does sinny pick the team ? is agar a puppet , surely sinny decided the contract agar decides week to week

According to Agar he picks the team I personally have no reason to disbelieve this.

I'd guess they pretty much discuss everything but agar makes the calls for match day squad.However it works they appear to compliment each other.

They work very closely together and consult each other. This is how successful clubs operate....

e.g 'doing great as i say richard ' 'yes boss ' or complement ?

Nearly there! Early rounds always unpredictable, and we have had a very disrupted pre-season.

Main thing I’m looking for is the pack performance. I expect Gale & Eastmond to play. I want to see us tough down the middle and making ground. Not sure if Holroyd will be fit though, and he’d be in my first choice team.

Good luck to Wakey this year too.

Ha I had to read through my post again to get that. Bit of both I reckon, it helps team spirit.

Agree on the pack.That's the key area I hope we improve on,without a good pack (with a bit of depth) we'll stand still at best. I reckon we'll struggle against alot of the better teams with any injuries to our big props.

Another one who only recognises half of the game. Defence is as much a valued skill as carrying the ball. Someone who is energetic and mobile in defence and dominates collisions is as welcome and someone who churns through carries.

Yeah. We need bigger and more skillful players around Donaldson to work as a unit. I think we've got that.....

That's assuming when we meet the better teams they will have their best props available also.We have 5 props I'm counting Prior as he will do alot of minutes in the front row. Thompson is the 6th but the juries out on whether he can be a success. I've not looked at at the strength depth of Wigan, Saints, Wire, Dragons and Hull props.

Yeah very true.
Wigan lack experience, and big metres for me.
Wire - too reliant on Hill and not the player he was.
Saint's - very strong, but Walmsley is key, and if he gets injured...
Catalans - strong but we all know Catalans big game failings, and don't travel well......
Hull - pretty strong but ditching Watts was worst decision they ever made and Taylor was injured most of last year.....

Hopefully Tetevano will settle in nicely and really give our pack a boost. Remains to be seen but hes got the right pedigree.

We need the likes of Mikolaj and Cam Smith to kick on again now. Tommy and Walters are still young and we need to bring them both thru gradually, we need them both to feature and contribute thru the season though.

Prior, Mellor, Thompson and Leeming are all in their 2nd years at the club and should be better for it.

Saints and Wigan again for me. The rest battling for 3rd and we should be in that mix.

Agree with all that. From reading comments by Agar and Cam Smith the latter is to be used as a ball playing forward to work outside Gale. That tells me Eastmond is going to be used more as a running six which should gives us pace and spark we were missing when Lui played there.

Cam has all the ability in the world. Just needs to apply it. He will used off the bench i think, introduced after 25 mins to make an impact.

Cant imagine Walters will be rushed given the depth we have in the second row.Surely if he is fit we should be able to rely on holroyd to do 20 odd minutes a week?

Hands wise, he's as good as anything else we have other than Gale and Eastmond. My concern with Cam is his lateral movement. He's grown so much in the last 2-3 years that he's lost that bit of pace, but more worryingly he's not as agile as he used to be. That's the type of conditioning I'd be doing with him to get his step and first 5 yards back.

He's 22 now, if he's going to make the 13 jersey his own it needs to be this season really. If he does, he's a pillar of the pack for the next 10 years.