didnt somone once say if we ever lost 6 of our last 10, McDermott automatically gets fired or something?

Shocked at that result.

Huddersfield are a completely garbage outfit. I fully expected the Rhinos to take care of that shower of sh*te with ease.

I think Brian will now be coming in for more closer scrutiny than at anytime of his spell in charge at Leeds.

More scrutiny than the last 7 years this thread has been running for, go back and read the original posts, it’s hilarious

You are not the only one.

should we be shocked? really?

Without doubt this current rhinos players squad is the weakest in the super league era. Over the last few seasons players have left or retired without any adequate replacements brought in. The big question is why have we arrived at this state of affairs. It certainly did not happen overnight, it’s been a gradual process. Maybe the senior club management have been preoccupied with the ground/stadium development. Certainly it’s been a major project and is still obviously ongoing. My main fear and concern is to build a decent team you need several quality players to be part of the team to build on. At the moment we don’t even have that group of players.

We do have some quality players. We also have a heap of average to poor ones. Without looking at BM for a second, in terms of recruitment I think we took a wrong turn by not adding a couple of players between 2016 and 2017. I know we won the comp that year, but in terms of the longer term its left us even more exposed this year and beyond. I've no doubt we would have won in 2017 if we'd got a couple of new players in.

As it is we've got a bunch of old, injury-prone and largely ineffective forwards who if they hadn't been at the club through major successes would struggle to get a game based on what they are actually doing on the field.

In terms of what we do on the field, I've no doubt BM will still be here next year. I just look at too many of our performances as being boring, lacking the most basic shape and worst of all, lacking energy. You could put videos up from our worst of 2016 and 2018 and it would be hard to tell which year was which.

It might be, but it should still be good enough to beat a team like Hudds.

Obviously not.

Quote ="Backwoodsman"Without doubt this current rhinos players squad is the weakest in the super league era. '" Give over. Worse than 1996? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_Leeds_RLFC_season

Quote ="Backwoodsman"Without doubt this current rhinos players squad is the weakest in the super league era. '" Give over. Worse than 1996? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_Leeds_RLFC_season

Quote ="Bullseye"Give over. Worse than 1996? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_Leeds_RLFC_season'" Jesus. the current Bradford team would beat that.

Quote ="Bullseye"Give over. Worse than 1996? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_Leeds_RLFC_season'" Jesus. the current Bradford team would beat that.

Some of those players came out of retirement to represent us that season due to massive shortages. That was a year of adversity.

But you look at that squad and players when they were here in prime, and the following would walk into the current Leeds set up:

Faimalo, Fallon, Forshaw, Fozzard, Harmon, Hassan, Holroyd, Howard, Kemp, Hulme, Innes, Iro, Mann, Mcdermott, Mercer, Morely, Newton.

That's a full seventeen players there, that could replace players in our current first team squad who were better, than current. That kind of highlights what Super League has become these last few years.

Hassan would walk in to the current side??

Come now, you're just being silly.

He might not have been the best. But are you seriously trying to say that Sutcliffe, Keinhorst, or Handley were anywhere near as good? Because they simply were not.

Yes! Phil Hassan, bless him, was a trier. That's about it. He was not as good as any of the three you name.

In fact, my favourite memory of him is after we'd sold him to Salford, and and Morley hit him so hard that Phil's boot flew off.

Give over, he was much better than those three players. Similar, as in bang average, but a better all round game than those as a centre. I will however give you that Sutcliffe can at least offer more flexibility.

Trouble is more than half of them weren't at their peak in 96. They were stealing a wage at Leeds.

A few of them had come out of retirement. Mercer one, and he still put in better performances than we see from our Backrowers now, other than Ward. Although I think he was actually turning out at prop a few times that year also.

Newton was one of the best youngsters ever to come through the academy at Leeds

Although we did nick him from Warrington. Makes a change to the role reversal these days

nearly 7 years on and still hanging in there, well done Bri

Sal Paradise has been making rash statements since the start on this thread. Credibility = zero.

For making rash comments on a thread? Wow. There's literally nobody who's posted regularly who hasn't spouted utter nonsense at some point. Particularly in reaction to a bad game/performance. I've been there for sure. Its a message board, not BM's fan club.

BM's record in trophies is great, and some people refuse to give him enough credit for that (just as some refuse to give Tony Smith enough as well), which is really unfair. From 2011-2015 I really find him hard to fault, and coming back last year was an achievement in itself.

However, I don't think some people call him out enough for 2016, which was terrible, an awful season. Comparisons to 1996 are daft because then the club was almost bankrupt, and we had quality players leaving mid-season (like Tait leaving to be replaced by Gibbons, Fallon by Golden etc), not to mention Schoey, Harvey Howard and others jump ship as soon as they could get a gig somewhere else.

2016 by comparison was just an utter farce. It started badly and went downhill, with an ongoing pity party and BM IMO guilty of serious errors in terms of continually picking half fit players and seemingly not recognising how bad the situation was until way too late. We had injuries, but in most games we put out sides capable of performing far better than they did (14 players played more than 20 games that year). We may have survived without Segeyaro, but he made the difference between a comfortable path through the Middle 8s and a real slog.

This year started OK but is now a shambles. What's most worrying to me is that we seem to be in full Groundhog mode now, with the mistakes of 2016 coming back along with the collapse of structure, players being picked who aren't fit, and continuing to pick players who simply aren't performing in the vain hope they'll magically turn it around. It really is the definition of stupid.

A lot of 2016 and this year I put down to BM. To be fair, I don't think GH hasn't managed recent recruitment well, and some of our most senior players simply aren't showing the kind of 'leadership' that they should. But ignoring that it looks like 2 out of 3 years under BM will have been our worst in SL since 1996 and not acknowledging his huge role in it, is as bad as pretending that all the wins are nothing to do with him. You can't give him credit for wins and ignore garbage, or bag him for bad times and ignore/diminish the good.

how many are stealing a wage now?

If you use tvoc's definition WRT Cummins in 2003, you could argue Ferres, Ablett, Delaney and even Cuthbertson and JJB are 'stealing a living'. I thought he was harsh then, but it was just one player. The problem now is that I'd say none of our older forwards are individually stealing a living, but collectively they're very poor.