Our offence was bad, and as you say, that probably put a lot of stress on our defence.

I've never been a big fan of the 'we'll just score more than you mentality. And imo the fact that the defensive issues lasted all year (to an extent, certainly got better with Segeyaro and others back). Is worrying because defence should be a lit easier to fix than attacking issues.

At the end of the day we'll need a massive improvement on both sides of the ball to contend next year, and imo, defence must always come first.

Saints, Wigan, Hudds, and Warrington conceded fewer points than us last year. Nobody scored more.

That's not the point, defence has to be good if your offence struggles, ours wasn't. Saying we'll just score more is a bad attitude to have. We conceded a lot of points in individual games.

Im not interested in the points conceded as that can be skewed by individual games, I'm not interested in last year or really in arguing with you, as clearly we disagree.

But the bottom line for me is we cannot defend as we have this year and expect to contend.

It is the point. Why are we accepting the offence struggling? the 404 points we scored this year was a terrible total. It was atrocious. Had it merely been poor, we probably would be in the middle 8s. Had it been ok, we would have been in with an outside chance of the top 4. Had our offence been good we would have been in with a decent chance, had it been as good as it was last year we would be league leaders.

I think that whilst poor attack can lead to struggling in defence I also think that poor defence can lead to poor attack.

Whereas last season we grew confidence from our defence, this season I think it's drained us of energy both physically and mentally. And that's aside from any tactical issues as starting our sets further down the field, having less energy to attack with or the opposition having more energy with which to defend themselves.

Our defence was the 6th best in a league of 12 last year.

No it wasn't. You're looking at how many points were conceded by each team. That is purely statistical and doesn't take into account other related and variable factors that are needed to judge the best defence.

I'm afraid your subjective judgement on who had the best defence made 0 difference to the amount of points we earned last year.

The actual amount of points we conceded had a huge effect.

include all the other related and variable factors needed judge the best defence you want. The results on the field are all that counts.

It's a vicious cycle isn't it, we struggled defensively, so had to try harder to score, which resulted in errors, which made it harder to defend....

As I said I think our scrambling defence worked hard in some of close games, which takes a lot out of the tank.

You don't think our defence last season had any bearing whatsoever on our attack?

Unfortunately you appear to be doing your usual of arguing like a politician. You're trying to deny the other argument has any validity whatsoever. It's a popular, if somewhat simple debating tactic. Which is why it's used so often by politicians.

The total points conceded is helped massively by the final 7 games of the regular season (23 Rounds). We averaged just 14.8 in those 7 games, in the opening 16 rounds the figure was 29.5 (which if we carried on at that rate we would've conceded over 200 points more than 2015). Last year we conceded on average 20.5 during the opening 23 rounds.

So posters saying the defence was poor during the first half of the year does actually stand up with figures, as well as being plainly obvious just by watching what was happening on the pitch.

There's also a huge difference in letting in 20 points when you're attack is garbage to letting the same points in when you can't score and need to rely on a tight defence to have a chance of winning. Letting in some soft tries at the end of a game when you're winning by 20+ isn't the same as letting those same tries in when the game is on the line.

But I'm sure a certain poster knows that.

Not really no. We were an 'attacking side' last year. We scored far more points than anyone. That made things far easier for our defence, which wasn't great

You appear to be arguing that your belief has validity simply because you believe it. No logic or evidence behind it, simply that you believe the defence has been terrible this year, and is brilliant last year therefore that was the case.

The goal post changing starts. The defence hasn't now been bad this year, it has been bad for a certain cherry picked portion of the year

This year, in the 7 games between 4th march and 9th april we also only conceded an average of 20.5, and that was early season by any measure.

If we were to make those last 7 games you cherry picked the last 8 games, that number goes up to 18.9points per game.

If we make those last 7 games you cherry picked the 2nd half of the season that number shoots up to 25.6 ppg

The number for the first half of the season would drop to 25.2ppg.

Its almost like if we wanted to cherry pick the figures, we could show pretty much anything, and if we were cherry picking stats to show the defence as better later in the year you would certainly start just after we had conceded 52pts, 40pts, 52pts.

I wouldn't disagree with that at all.

Losing 56-12, or 52-12 or 40-8 or 52-18 runs up stats on what you concede but isn't really a telling about your defence. Those scores are indicative of a team low on confidence who are running on empty rather than a team which can't defend.

Your defence is really tested when the game is on the line, when games finish 10-12, 15-20, 18-16, 8-0, 20-18, 20-16 etc

I'm gonna say my piece, and that's it. I'm not gonna get sucked into a 40 page tedious quotathon with smokey justified by ''well this is a forum for debate''. No doubt smokey will rebuke my post and have his fabled last word on the subject.

The reason leeds are where they are, is because of defence. In the first half the season leeds hemorrhaged points. They were getting marched down the field with ease. Teams were punching holes left right and centre. We were constantly in scramble defence and set recovery mode.

Leeds attack was also poor. But wigan's attack has been poor. The reason they are in the top 4 is because of their defence. Leeds defence tightened up towards the end and thus they started to win some games. But such was the severity and poorness of the defence early on they had lost far too many games by far too big a margin to get into the top 8.

I don't care what the stats say. That's it. Quote away, disect every line in great deal, it won't change my opinion, you'll be wasting your time.

That you know your post to be untrue that you had to preface with excuses means I don't need to pick it apart. You know it to be untrue, as do I.

Think that's a pretty fair assessment. Your confidence and composure with the ball also suffers when you're being pulled apart in D.

I'd agree with with, as well as the stats posted earlier which support it that in the first half of the year we were conceding considerably more points. Of course this is cherry picking because it also tells the story of us struggling to defend with Burrow as a 9, and our defence tightened up with the arrival of Segeyaro and even when Falloon managed to play.

Our awful defence put a lot of pressure on our attack, an attack that without 2 pivots from last year (3 if you count Mags missing most games) and at least one back missing from round 3 onwards, was always going to struggle in the first place. This year we needed defence to take the pressure off while we adjusted. That didn't happen and this is the result.

Leeds see the amount of points conceded over the first 23 rounds rise by 16%

Leeds concede 99 points more than the previous year

Leeds see the amount of points scored over the first 23 rounds fall by 46%

leeds score 354 fewer points than the previous year

Leeds go from the best offence in the league by some distance to the worst offence in the league.

Leeds go from the 6th best defence in the league to the 8th best defence in the league.

Leeds concede fewer points in the first half of the year than the second half of the year.

Leeds fans astutely identify the defence in the first half of the year as the biggest issue the side faced and call for the sacking of the coach, congratulating themselves in forum circlejerk for their astuteness.

Quote ="SmokeyTA"Leeds see the amount of points conceded over the first 23 rounds rise by 16%'" 477 to 576 = 20.75% increase Quote ="SmokeyTA"Leeds go from the 6th best defence in the league to the 8th best defence in the league. '" 5th best to 9th best - source - tables available here: www.rugby-league.com/superleague/tables Otherwise the post pretty much checks out. The story of Leeds' season surely is one of not scoring enough points and of conceded too many, too often.

Quote ="SmokeyTA"Leeds see the amount of points conceded over the first 23 rounds rise by 16%'" 477 to 576 = 20.75% increase Quote ="SmokeyTA"Leeds go from the 6th best defence in the league to the 8th best defence in the league. '" 5th best to 9th best - source - tables available here: www.rugby-league.com/superleague/tables Otherwise the post pretty much checks out. The story of Leeds' season surely is one of not scoring enough points and of conceded too many, too often.

Defence isn't [ijust[/i about conceding points though, as odd as that may sound.

If your opponent is making silly meters every set through; missed tackles; getting in the offload, not pushing up in the line or meeting tackle with aggression; losing the collision/wrestle; getting mullered with quick PTB's; letting through half breaks; conceding daft penalties etc - you're going to lose a hell of a lot of field position over the course of a game, and therefore a high proportion of your 'attacks' are starting in your own 20m, a much harder position to score from.

Not all aspects of a game are covered on the Opta site.

I found when watching Leeds at the start of the year, similar to what FlexWheeler said, that the defence was all over the place. Poorly organised and constantly scrambling, teams seemingly making breaks for fun and the ruck was a joke. It tightened up massively later on, probably down to the returning players & graft in training, and the things I mentioned in the paragraph above being cut down. Field position over the game was restored and Leeds start getting the results.

We've got all the right numbers just not necessarily in the right order, I'll give you that sunshine.

Undoubtedly our defence was not good enough however it was our attack that suffered the greatest drop in performance compared to the previous year.

The number of tries scored was down by over 50% with try assists and goals down by just under 50%. Clean breaks were down by 43% and offloads by 26%. I know some on here do not like stats but these are big numbers and they tell a story. Penalties were up by 40% with the obvious loss of metres and possession.

Some say the best form of defence is to attack. Whilst this is a simplistic notion it does bear some truth. If you outscore the opposition you win the game no matter how many mistakes in defence you make. Last season we won many games by outscoring the opposition despite leaking points. eg HKR 40-30, Hudd 28-24, Wig 26-14, Cat 38-22, Cas 26-12, Wak 48-22, Sal 28-18, Wak 58-26, Hull 32-20, Cat 36-22 and we drew with Hudd 24 each. This season our defensive lapses have been more crucial because we lost matches by not creating scores when in a position to do so.

IMO there were several reason for this huge drop off in the effectiveness of our attack. The first and I think most important reason is that we did not replace our main playmaker and goal kicker as we should have. The second is the woeful injury list which hit the main strike weapon of our backs particular hard. The third reason is that too many of the senior squad under performed when they did get the chance to get on the field.

I think you have fallen in to the same trap as some others here. I don't disagree that in principle, defence for all the reasons you list can be a secondary factor for marginal differences in offence. And of course vice versa.

And again, lets not forget that those secondary and marginal differences in offence, then go on to effect the defence, so a leeds team which scored far less, which dropped an awful lot of ball, which struggled with any kind of long or short kicking game and whose last tackle options all year have been terrible, caused that defence to defend more often, in worse positions.

But we arent looking at secondary factors for marginal changes. We are looking at an offence that scored nigh on half the points in did in the previous season. There is no way on earth that the problems the defence is responsible in any meaningful part for that. There is no way that Leeds scored half the number of points they did the previous season because they started more sets on their own 20. Its a ludicrous assertion.

Leeds scored half the number of points they did for very clear and obvious reasons, our last tackle options were terrible, and we made far far far too many errors with ball in hand.

If we had to blame one area of the game for our troubles, watch the 52-18 loss to Warrington and then tell me our problems originate in the defence and the not the offence.