No turning on him from me. Absolutely the right man to lead us forward. However, part of being that leader is taking responsibility when the team is clearly not set up correctly to perform. Or if they don’t perform you do something to change it. We have looked poor for at least 3 of the 5 games, lacking intensity and seeming to have limited if any plan.

Pre season was all Rohan, so if we start the season very hit and miss and lacking basic intensity and effort then yes it is on the players but also on him. He is calling the shots so I would just like to see an acceptance of that from him.

Im sure in one of his pressers after a game he did say maybe he needs to look at how he prepared the team or something along those lines

I wouldn`t get rid of Bentley and fingers crossed with Lisone.
Would prefer a Warrea Hargraves but that ain`t happening.
Fusitua I`m not convinced and Olpherts for me is a bad signing so far.
Even Cas fans didn`t rate him when he played there.
Would definitely like 2 new half backs and would hope Smith has his eyes on a couple of fringe players from the NRL for next year.
JJB says Smith likes his halves to run with the ball and that Leeming stifled that process.
If last night and other nights are anything to go by his halves are not doing too much running imo.

I would say we looked ok in the second half against probably the worse team in League so far and we played reasonably well against a Saints team likely to be suffering from their trip across the other side of the world.
The rest of the time we couldn`t beat a poor Cas and Hull team and got mullered against Wire.
But there`s green shoots for sure and we need to build on them each week.

Ditching Rohan now would be crazy. Almost as crazy is the level of faith that some have in him and which will put half the crowd on his back when things are tough.
Truth is that he's a relatively young coach, unproven at this level and who may fail or may succeed. Building him into some sort of guru is really doing him no favours. Most wouldn't do this with a player at a similar point of their career so why not allow a coach still learning their trade the same grace?

I do agree with this, he’s learning but I personally like what I see, I like people who look at things differently.

Why are we a training centre for someone learning their trade? I'm sure during the search last year, GH said it was his biggest ever appointment and was a job that required someone with experience.

Now, suddenly, we have someone inexperienced and learning their trade whilst the squad still needs a major rebuild.

The whole set-up is a dog's dinner.

I’ve just watched the second half again because I’m a sadist.
At half time Cas had made 181 tackles and we made 133, we also made 6 handling error in 1st half, sky stats.

I made some notes myself on 2nd half, these won’t be perfect because I spent some time shouting at the telly.
I think we had 6 PTB in their 25 at 65 minute mark.
42 mins - penalty MacDonald high tackle, soft
48 mins - penalty Martin strip, soft
51 mins - Martin , knock on
54 mins - MacDonald PTB error
56 mins - Sezer, knock ball down on Miller
56 m - Fusitua jams in, Cas try
58 m - penalty Austin kick off out on full
61 m - Fusitua PTB error
67m - Sangare - lost ball in offload
68m - penalty, Roberts offside
69m - penalty, Smith strip, soft
70m - short restart, Cas get ball back
74m - Olpherts, dropped ball, try blown
77m - Austin dropped ball, last tackle.


Think only 15 PTBs in their 25 in whole second half
Think we had approx 50 plays where we passed twice or less or kicked, bulk were 1 man runs
Think approx 13 plays where we passed three times or more
I’m including a pass from dummy half as a pass in above.

It was dire and error riddled and Cas played at a higher level of intensity because it was v Leeds.
We still only lost by 6. They are fairly poor and will
Lose plenty this season. We may lose plenty as well.

As Rohan said we gave ourselves no chance to win, very poor and showed almost nothing with the ball

He might well have said that during his search but the experience requirement clearly went out of the window. Dogs dinner or work in progress? We'll know soon enough. Personally I'm happy to run with Smith for a while yet.

Thanks for the recap Sir Greg P. Saved me some pain there. Maybe you can tell me: were my eyes playing tricks or was Lisone looking in even worse shape than when he first rolled up at HQ?

Thanks for taking that bullet for me. It's been nagging at me all day. In short, through our own errors, we made impossible to win. Lot's to learn.

INOUT
Completely agree, he is no guru and is def learning. There are aspects I really disagree with (Can Smith should be made Captain, short kick offs just look plain amateur.)
But he’s young, hungry and seemingly on it for long run. If he did too well too soon he’d might attract NRL interest. Best to let him set the systems up and recruitment over next 2-3 yrs imho…..

Not sure he’s worse but it’s not great having another overseas signing looking unfit.

I’ll give him a bit more time.

Full game up on a popular video streaming site for anyone who missed and is a saddist!

A poor performance for sure, and a poor start to the season. We all knew this season was going to be a transition season and that to 4 was the aim. Disruption in the camp staff of kick off won't have helped. Cakes for Smith to go are madness. He is clearly a long term appointment and will take time to get things right. What he's not afraid to do is make hard decisions, something that has been leaking at the club for almost a decade. We are seeing poor players identified and moved on. We will come right, we have big players to come in, and we have players yet to peak.

Saints sailed very close to 3 in a row against a side beaten by 60 last week who turned up with a similar intensity to cas. I really like Smith but I think he needs to find some balance to his philosophies on the game as he seems to want to contradict all fundamental principles, some of which will always be true due to the nature of the sport.

Im not sure on his philosophy of every game is its unique entity because momentum that comes from learning and progression is true of any skill or activity.

Dosnt help when in form players like Walters lose there place while out of shape puddings like Lisone keep theres.

It seems to me that we rely heavily on Martin and when he has a good game so do Leeds. He had a poor one against Cas and it seemed to trickle down to every department. I think Martin is more influential than most give him credit for

Don’t think that’s true. Apart from good goal kicking, not seen an awful lot from Martin since beginning last season. His defence has been woeful so far this year too…..
Personally would not have renewed his contract….

Yes, I think that's twice been shown in games against Castleford where a simple hard nosed game plan would have sufficed and delivered comfortable wins against weak or weakened sides. On balance though, he's still done great. There are some who seem to want to believe he was lucky or "rode a wave" to the GF last year. If he did, it was a wave of his own generation. I have a bias towards him because his arrival seems to have facilitated the departure of number of players who were either past their best or never quite good enough for Leeds - in my opinion. His big challenge will be to use the cap space we should have next year to bring in players who can transform the side, and then come up with a style that makes a consistent and high performing team. In the short term, I'm backing Smith and the team to come up with a win against Catalans next week.

Thought Martin was great last year. Less so this (so far) and seems to be carrying extra pounds for some reason.

I like rohan but his going against everything that is tried and trusted and trying to virtually rewrite the coaching book is starting to grate a little.

That’s my feelings, similar to Brian McDermott. It’s not Rohan’s fault that we’ve seemingly been in a transition for 8 years or so but I’m running out of patience now.

I’m beginning to think that GH got lucky with the golden generation coming though around a similar period. We need need a new direction. We should never have been in this situation to begin with.

Some interesting points here.

In the second half we made more than an error every 3 minutes. Including 2 where we did not play the ball properly.
That’s player error.
How many we would have made if we’d matched the line speed/ aggression of Cas we’ll never know.
Not wearing yourself out in defence needs you to be able to then attack with real speed and aggression. We barely moved the ball because for the main part we were in our own half getting dominated.
For mine we should aim to be more aggressive when defending in their 25/30, we let every team out of pressure too easily.

I wanted an experienced coach to come in last year but for mine we have to stick with Smith, he’s exited many players that most on here were calling for. I think last year he overachieved a bit getting to a GF. We made so many errors against FC and Cas and should have won both.

We aren’t going to get a top NRL coach and SL this year looks very competitive. For next year we need a bit of quality like Wire have recruited Dufty and Vaughan and Williams.

This year could get really bumpy like Wire last season IF he does not want to not renew many coming off contract. If it gets worse again I think we need to plough on and take it and then see what he can do with his own team in 2024.
Think we need to stay the course with him and not change coach