True, no questioning of his mental strength. I just hope that, like JP, he recognises the waning of his physical powers and calls it a day when his time's up.

Played about 10 minutes after half time, and to be fair, I think Mac got it about right. Oldezki looked OK carrying the ball but towards the end of his stint looked to be struggling with the pace a bit defensively.

He'll certainly get better, and looked promising, but imo that wasn't the game for him to get big minutes in.

MO said as much in his post match interview. He's still a kid, a humongous mountain of a kid, but needs to be introduced sensibly.

The Opta Jones-Buchanan stat of conceding one penalty is IMO correct here.

He had an involvement in other penalty decisions, namely - he was next to last man to release when Moon was penalised for holding down on 6 mins - he was the other tackler when Golding was pinged for the ball steal on 55 mins - he hacked the loose ball through when Handley was adjudged offside on 63 mins.

The one Opta allocation with regards Leeds penalties conceded I would call debatable was the double tackle on 53 mins by Ward and Parcell where the ball came free - that went against Parcell, in live play I called it against Ward.

Shame Widnes blew a 22-0 lead against Hull today. Bad week for Wigan with all above them winning and creating a slight gap. Still got players dropping like flies (Escare, Flower, Gelling are going to miss most if not all the rest of the season) and have only won 3 of their last 9 for all the talk of them being fine even with absentees. Next 4 games for them are interesting (with plenty of guys still missing) - Wire (N) Saints (A) Wakey (H) Hull (A). They're only 4 points ahead of Saints & Wire ATM and could get caught up by them if they pick up a few losses in that run of games which is definite possibility.

I agree with your summary. Too often the camera dwells on JJB after a penalty when in fact he was not the offender. We all know he does give some penalties away but that goes with the job as he is often first tackler in and so last up and the award is given when he has bodies on top of him. Also the players that make the most
tackles run a greater risk of being pinged more often.

The irony here was Jones-Buchanan's only penalty concession on Saturday came when he tried to clear himself from the ruck only for Tony Gigot to deliberately throw the ball at him forcing the referee to act. Different referee on a different day potentially a different decision in this contentious area highlighted earlier in the season.

Its the defender's responsibility to clear the PTB area. If they are trying or at least trying to keep out of the way and the acting half throws the ball into them then it should be a scrum. But to be fair its a very difficult area to police.

Some of the defensive stats in SL are absolutely laughable. The number of missed tackles for which there is no excuse is ridiculous.

Leeds missed 30+ tackles on Saturday and still won!!

A pretty poor game but a great win, a gap is starting to form between the top 4 and the rest so it was important to keep pace. Cuthbertson and Galloway were excellent, Ward and Parcell were good and it was great to see Oledzki make his SL debut and not look out of place.

The right edge defence though was absolutely awful. There seemed to be zero communication between them which constantly left a huge gap between McGuire and Sutcliffe. This only got worse when Delaney was introduced as Ward and Sutcliffe moved slightly further in to cover his lack of lateral movement while McGuire and Briscoe stayed on the edge and Catalans took full advantage. Delaney did seem to be taken off rather early, did he get a knock?

The more I watch Sutcliffe the more I'm convinced McDermott needs to treat him the way he's treated Golding and Ward. Give him a starting shirt and let him know he's allowed to make mistakes and develop and I think he will take his game to the next level. The only question is which shirt do we give him.

Only just watched the game back after being away all weekend,

Why was no one penalised for the deliberate trip on Golding in the first half, the commentary team just ignored it as well, is tripping just allowed now, used to be a straight red for deliberate trip like that, still should be st least a yellow

Did it actually make contact? Haven't watched it back yet and most probably won't.

Mac said Delaney got a knock on his head and couldn't be brought back on

As much as I like Delaney he's really become incredibly injury prone to the point of endangering his quality of life after RL.

Seems he has 1 game in, 2/3 games out.

Yet he (and JJB) have played more league games than our other recognised 2nd rowers this season, so we shouldn't dismiss what they still contribute because we'd be in a much worse situation without them in that position this year. Seems to have gotten more and more vocal in the team also, he's often the one when the forwards huddle together in the warm up doing the talking.

Duport has been charged with Grade A Other Contrary Behaviour for the trip.

I see with the disciplinary that Danny Brough has only been charged 1-2 for a crusher tackle and 2-3 for a cannonball tackle. Seems the disciplinary are going back to soft sentencing again.

Brough should be hammered for the cannonball tackle , but the crusher on Webster was not his fault , the attacker had turned his back into the tackle then fell to the floor , not sure you can blame the defender here .

I hope he was hammered by his teammates afterwards. They were in a good position to win that game but he couldn't contain himself.

1 match ban for the crusher, 1 match for the cannonball tackle. Somehow the disciplinary deem both worthy of the same (soft) ban. And people say we have the RFL in our back pocket.

absolutely pathetic from the disciplinary - the cannonball tackle alone should have been at least 4 games in my opinion.
how was it only charged as a class B

I'm not bothered either way really but you have players getting several games for similar tackles then this. All we ask for is consistency across the board which we clearly don't get.

Makes me laugh when people kick up a fuss on mass the next week players get long bans and players get sent off for nothing really ( yes i'm thinking Amor against Wigan) then a few weeks later its all relaxed again.

leeds still kings of the foreward pass.

Well you were forewarned.

fffffoooooorrrrrrrreeeeeewwwaaarrrrrrrrnnnneeedddddd!!!!!!!!!!!!!