Save your breath. Gotcha refuses to accept that Tony Smith is a better coach than Paul Cullen and Smith has only been successful because of new players brought in.

Don't let facts....etc....etc....

Ah, noted.

Really? I direct you to the next quote below.




Now where in agreement. Do not under estimate what this did to Wigan. Last season who were their shinging lights again besides Richards? Tomkins brothers, Farrell, Hansen, McClorum, Goulding, to name but a few. All players that had become fully adjusted to Super League by the previous coach. Not too dissimilar to when Leeds had introduced many of our own youngsters to super league in 2002 and 2003. In fact we came extremely close to winning a cup and league double in 2003, but the players were better still in 2004 and it showed, and better again in 2005 despite no silverware.



Completely agree with this. But taking 2011 out of the question, what would then happen in 2012 in our current set up? we would be back to what McDermott has done this year. That's the bottom line of it.

A new coach will always make an "immediate" impact on a team lost with confidence and direction. But would Maguire really make a difference going forward then with those very same past it players?

Yes, because the team would be playing with structure, intensity, intelligence and direction. Rather than being an ill-disciplined, headless chicken rabble. You may disagree with that, but I'd venture that it's a difficult stance to adopt with any real confidence.

I'm not arguing the merits of Leeds' playing rosta, I'm arguing the merits of a good coach.

No, it's very easy to in part dissagree. I have watched these same players regress for the last 3 years, even whilst winning a 3rd on the trot championship. We had last season and before an extremely good coach. An extremely good coach who jumped ship because he knew exactly how these same players were going to go this season.

What we see now from Leeds is exactly what I called and predicted 18 months ago. That was long before any thoughts of McDermott has coach. It's not hindsight, go back on my posts and you will see it clearly. I always said without major changes to the playing rota that this would happen.



There is no doubt what a good coach can do, but he needs the right tools to do it. We saw that ourselves in 2004. We had a wonderfully developed squad, built on the right ingredients, and added to it a very good coach. History will show you what was achieved.

We also had an extremely good coach in the late 90's, who had one extremely good year, and then when realised the players were not capable of reproducing, flattered to deceive following this.

Were Wigan a poor coached team under John Monie? no they weren't, but they were not better than under their predecessor, and Monie himself even said the players were that good that the team could coach it's self. Even West had success with that team, could he really be regarded as a good coach? Could West come into Leeds now and make a difference?

Treacle pushing exercise - you don't think Maguire would improve Leeds markedly, I do. Let's agree to disagree.

No, your wrong on what I think. I agreed that Maguire would improve Leeds performances this season. I just don't agree he would improve the very same set of players going forward. Just like any other great coach in history, they need to stamp their own mark on the team and that involves their own players.

We were lucky at Leeds over a number of years, because our players were great at a young age and therefore were growing better together. Coaches did not need to drastically change things, but just add to it. What we need now though is major surgery.

Yes. It was.

And we DID get rid. And yet the catastrophe continues.

For reasons that bemuse the hell out of me, you guys now seem to have somehow stumbled across and started following the trail to hell that we blazed.

West could make a major difference.

'Taxi for McDermott and Lowes.'

That's because once you have that downward spiral it takes time to get out of it. You were never going to rebuild in one season. You do your rebuilding from a position of strength if you do not want to hit the wall.

What you see with the Bulls, is that despite appointing an excellent coach they are still doing has bad as the previous bad one. The reason been is because even though you did change the playing rosta, you replaced 5h1te with 5h1te. The tools for the coach are vitally important.

Totally agree. On Friday we should protest and not stop until the McDermott is sacked, even chanting "McDermott it's time to go" constantly throughout the match and refusing to leave the ground afterwards.

We already got reprimanded for booing the Third Coming at the Exiles game and now we are going to turn on our coach!?! We will be burned at the stake I tell ya!!

if you've got to hit the lowest point before you get better then surely it's going to get worse for you?

remember millward and being bottom of the league? noble then did a great 3/4 years of stabilising us into being a solid playoff team but that ultimately was as far as he could take us.

im not sure how much this is mcd or how much it is an ageing set of players who frankly seem ill disciplined and disrespectful towards mcd.

As I've said on the other thread, the major failure has been Hetheringtons recruitment and
mis-management of the Leeds youth systems for the last five years.

In the key positions we HAD players coming up and through, but they were never going to get past the incumbents in those positions due to our success and so moved on. Losing John Bastian to wolves was a hammer blow and who did we replace him with? Willie "jobs for the boys" Poching and Co. Madness, utter madness.

That's the key thing isn't it - Leeds, as with most clubs that build a little dynasty over a few seasons had stability and talent in abundance in the key positions. I remember McGuire playing and scoring against us in a 24 all draw in 2003 - not many teams are lucky to have a player like that in a pivotal position for so long.

This season has been a bit of a disaster, and I suspect next year will be more solid, but not spectacular. Someone at Leeds needs to be brave and bite the bullet with the squad.

Poching is also at Warrington now so not sure what your issue is with his appointment?

Ill second that Rogues...

i think there's one better Daniel Anderson is available if my memory serves me right

This squad of players, on the decline as they may be is at worst, the 5th best squad. I actually think our squad is better than Huddersfield's on paper and perhaps level with Saints' as well. 4th for me would have been acceptable with the squad as it is, but we are 8th, we are playing dross and the aging squad is getting older and older. The buck absolutely stops with the coach, if we had a better coach we would not be this low in the table.

We let a guy who had a proven track record of academy success be poached/coaxed away from us and replaced him with a hithero untested bloke in poching. Nice bloke that he is, surley we could have done better? Jobs for the boys/yes men and all that jazz.

Bastian was a huge loss IMO, well done to TS for poaching him (no pun intended!) but as Rogues (a man who knows a bit or two about the youth development of clubs) says, we have seem to lose interest in our youth development slightly since the success at first team level started coming.

Not sure about that - I certainly wouldn't swap squads, regardless of who was coaching them.