My mate, who's a Cas fan, hit the nail on the head. We can't rely on a fancy offload game to get us through games. It seems like McD starts the season with a plan, but can't adjust when teams work it out. We're back to the depressing rugby of just trying to smash it up the field.

Finally, I feel for Ash Handley. On a night when they were remembering his deceased mate that was a howler. Sure he'll come back stronger from it though. And that wasn't what lost us the game.

Classic "Rhino-ism" there.

Yes, except Brucie isn't a Rhino fan. In fact he's just a troll who's banned from most teams forums.

To be fair to McDermott he was probably worried Sinfield would crack under pressure & start throwing the nut around again. That & having to go up against TMFMISL was too much of a gamble.

Quote ="RhinoNeil"I was way too p!ssed off to post on here last night... That was the worst loss under McDermott in my eyes. The bloke is an absolutely ****ing moron. Using just one sub during 52 mins of play, when the side is effectively playing a 2nd Easter, that I just cannot get my head around. Burrow starting over Sinfield and staying on the pitch was equally as shocking. McDermott will never get sacked by GH, we need a petition of 20K+ signatures and be banging on his door.'" There's a nutter on the Hull forum who's an expert on creating and executing the perfect petition. Here's one he did for Radford a couple of months ago: https://www.change.org/p/adam-pearson-h ... terminated

Quote ="RhinoNeil"I was way too p!ssed off to post on here last night... That was the worst loss under McDermott in my eyes. The bloke is an absolutely ****ing moron. Using just one sub during 52 mins of play, when the side is effectively playing a 2nd Easter, that I just cannot get my head around. Burrow starting over Sinfield and staying on the pitch was equally as shocking. McDermott will never get sacked by GH, we need a petition of 20K+ signatures and be banging on his door.'" There's a nutter on the Hull forum who's an expert on creating and executing the perfect petition. Here's one he did for Radford a couple of months ago: https://www.change.org/p/adam-pearson-h ... terminated

As has been pointed out Aiton was knackered and his acting half play has become far too predictable meaning our first receivers are too easily targeted. On top of that he made a couple of key errors and a few headless chicken runs that you would have castigated Burrow for had he made them.

He also managed to beat some defenders, deliver some excellent dummy half passes and make some tackles in the middle of the field.

Something Burrow hasn't managed out of dummy half since 2011.

When the momentum of the game went in our favour, shortly after Sinfield's introduction, the Cas coach (who I don't rate the highly) recognised the shift in game tempo and made a triple substitution.

Our coach shuns such traditional thinking and showed Powell how to use a bench giving two of his subs about 4 minutes combined on the pitch. Genius.

Yup simple point but one you can't ignore.

If you look how Cas rotated their 6 props (including Massey and Boyle) the workload was shared and so were the minutes between them. not rocket science is it.

IMO McDermotts problem has always been and still is that he doesn't react to anything on the field during a game, he seems to have a plan before kick off and sticks to that no matter what happens during the game.

He does react but not always in the right way. If we were winning by a few scores last night then Yates gets more minutes and Walters gets on. How many times has he done the non sub thing when we've had things in control? None that I can remember. It's always usually in situations like last night when we're fighting to get back into it after falling behind on the scoreboard.

So he does react and doesn't stick to his pre match plan, but in a bad way.

100% right the man's a joke. If it hadn't been for Sinfield he would have won nothing at Leeds. Plan A (if he has one) is it, cannot react to or change anything that happens on the field as he can't read a game. He's NOT a coach! The second Sinny stepped on the field the game changed in our favour, although too late. We all knew Cas would come at us hell for leather from the start so what do we do, throw the ball around trying to play champagne rugby. It was obvious to any half decent coach that what had to be done was to tackle, tackle, tackle and wear them down a la Tony Smith Leeds side, and then put the foot on the gas in the last 20 minutes.

Why are we the only team that doesn't have an Assistant Coach? Is it because he's so smug or more likely that no-one will work with this clown!

Nail hit firmly on head.

If McD doesnt trust the 17 best available players to go out and play rugby for Leeds then he should tell Uncle Gary to save some brass and get rid of half the squad

Also noticed on a couple of occasions when we looked like pinning them in their own 20/30 Gale steps up and kicks on the 3rd and 4th tackle to get them out of a hole how many times did or do we do that?
All that experience and big game wins under our belts and we look clueless and devoid of ideas.

I'm not at all suprised, the guy can't coach a winning side for a whole season his league record proves this. We can play good in spurts and get up for big knockout games, but I'm not sure how much we can atribute this to the coach or the players.

I can't see us getting more than 4 points in the remaining games and can see us easily sliding down to fourth before the split. No idea how we will fare in the 8s

I for one hope we get rid at the end of the season. I give credit and thanks for his service and success. But the trophies have painted over his failings. How he has yet to finish in the top four with the squad he has had the last 4 years is incredible.

part of the problem was our forwards either by accident or design are bunched close together. So it's easy for the defenders to pick out the ball receiver. This was also the case in the second half at the wigan game.
Aiton seemed to burn himself out. We desperately need another hooker, warrington have Clark and Dwyer both quick and smart players. I would have taken a chance on Lunt, whilst he apparently is not performing well, we know what he can do.
When we get the full squad back on the field things should improve . On balance the squad is getting weaker year by year.
If we win nowt this year then it will be time for changes. The thought of burrow playing next season does not fill me full of confidence.

Traditional thinking? He can't think. Get him walking, I can't spake!

he reminds me of brian noble. when plan A works its great but if I doesn't then he hasn't a clue. he is also totally incapable of changing things during a game. he is tactically clueless.
I praised him a while back but since then he has returned to type.
for me we are desperate for a change of coach. Hetherington shouldn't escape criticism either. his recruitment has been awful.

It's all a cunning plan.....Leeds want to give the impression they're punch drunk right up until the home game against Hull. Here again they will be lacklustre and probably lose, but against the same team the following week they will win in style.

All joking aside it would not surprise me that this indeed will happen; vindicating Printer's opinion that the club is fixated on winning another CC. Why should it surprise us....the team has plenty of GF victories but getting a winning taste of the CC must be sweet to all of them? And a fitting swansong for (the protected from playing too much in the 'meaningless' league games) Kevin Sinfield.

The financial renumeration must be making GH smack his lips too.

They will do enough to qualify for the play offs with this again (for this year) being of secondary importance only. Don't forget but for Briscoe's late faux pas against Catalans then Leeds would have been through and would have probably have found sufficient juice in the tank to have had a good crack at the double.

It could be that the club have a CC win as the key target for this year. It is possible that in this transition period, sights have been set a bit lower. But if that's the case I'd like to see the recruitment follow to move us on and through the transition period. I am willing to accept that Rome wasn't built in a day and all that, but they did have a plan and lots of labour to push it through.

This isn't a transistion year, sick of hearing that phrase, and why people use it I don't know, it should have been a transistion year, next year will be a transisttion year, but this current one is the same as norm but with the same players held on too long.

And I don't for one minute believe we are targeting the Mickey Mouse cup at the expense of the league. That is just a scrapping the barrels excuse for those that have their heads buried regarding the poor coach, who has an history of poor league form.

I didn't say it was a transition year I said a transition period. IMO it is, we are in a process of bring younger members of the wider squad through to begin to replace those long term members of the squad who have left and those who are leaving at the end of the season. The 2016 team will look very different to the 2014 team.

As for the CC. I think it both possible and plausible that when the targets were being set for this year the CC was seen as a more realistic goal than winning the GF. That doesn't mean that I wouldn't prefer to win GF, I would, but GH and McD MAY see the CC as more realistic. BTW pure idle speculation on my part and I'm sure that even if I'm right, both GH and McD would like to win both and would prefer to win the GF.

I don't think we're viewing the Cup as our best shot and targetting it over the league. I think the players will want to win both. But we were never going to keep winning for 18 rounds on the trot and even if we did they'd then probably be concerns that we've pushed too hard too early and would our bad run of games come seasons end?

The league structure might've change and we might have "every minute matters"......but that doesn't mean you can peak all year long. The Top 8 era was always linked with peaking your squad to perform at key times and the new structure doesn't mean that's changed, just means you can't afford to go off the boil for too long as you might miss the top 4.

CURRENTLY, we are still ok because we unexpectedly found ourselves with a large cushion and have had the 'luxury' of not having to keep up the intensity or performance for a couple of months and still have top spot in our own hands. No other team has had that oppotunity to take their foot off the gas mid-season.

taking your foot off the gas yet flogging your props until they can't walk?

if, and it's a big if, the players have been eased off then they wouldn't be playing the minutes they are and would be rested here and there

i dont think Leeds have taken their foot off the gas i just think other teams have upped their game and Leeds are struggling to cope. The injuries are not helping and the lack of depth of quality in the squad and its ageing profile is beginning to yield some cracks in planning and coaching ability