I wasn't justifying anything. I was simply explaining why you had to anaylse the statistics properly.

One winner? They're not in competition with each other. They should compliment each other. They're in the same team.

Looking at the stats, in terms of number of carries, Friday was second only to Harlequins at home.

Surprising but true apparently.

Second only in terms of what? Second lowest or second highest? I'd expect the latter but you never know.

It was the second highest. 240 compared to 249 in the Quins game.

analyze them in conjunction with the match itself - exactly

because of our awful ball control and HKRs great kicking game, our forwards spent far too much time tackiling

hence, we had a few exit sets where every drive was taken by the backs to try and give the forwards a breather

this was deliberate and clearly shows up in the number of drives across the backs and the forwards

the root cause was not lazy forwards but a deliberate plan to attempt to manage the effect of our overall horrible display

stats only help in conjunction what you can see during the game

I'd agree with that, although it was more by accident than design on occasions. We even had McGuire taking the first hit-up from a 20 metre restart at one point. Total mess.

Throughout the 17 or in the forwards?

I noted McGuire driving in that tap 20 and screamed at the TV at that point.

What a mess.

If McShane is only being "credited" with two misses then I'd take that whole set of stats with a large pinch of sodium chloride...

Fair point. I counted 4 in the first half alone.

Throughout the team, but there does look to be a disproportionate amount of the work done by the backs.

I don't think we needed any stats, inaccurate or otherwise, to conclude that last Friday was a bag of s[ihi[/it.

oh i don't know. the fish and chips were top class

I think that was the first 15 minutes.

Yeah 6 is low drives.

But he made a decent collision in those. I said it at the time. Lets look at the context behind what people do. Again made over 30 tackles in a perfect defensive display. I'm surprised more people haven't jumped on his bomb of a try. Should have finished and would have been a timely score.

You cant take the ball up if you haven't got it. There's a bigger issue here. For the first 25 minutes (the length of TMFMISL's first stint) Leeds had only 25% of the ball. That's not good enough.

This was down to KR's kicking game and our own errors. At this stage our completion rate was probably around 40%. Again, not good enough.

Let's not lay everything at the carries.

Bailey was replaced by Ambler on 20 minutes after the Fisher Try.

At that point Leeds had completed 3 of their 6 sets (50%). At the same point Hull KR had completed 11 of their 13 sets (85%) although some of those completed possessions were on kicks early in the tackle count.

More telling was that Hull KR had only had to make 18 completed tackles (resulting in a play the ball) compared to Leeds' 48 at the 20 minute mark.

Some times you just have to compliment the opposition's opening quarter which bar two attacking knock ons and a penalty was spot on.

The downside to Bailey's opening contribution was the knock on 9 minutes when he looked all over a scorer (indeed he ended up over the line in perfect position to score only without the ball in his possession) and the follow up conceding of a penalty for a late off the ball challenge.

Yeah, I'll buy that.

The completion rate was awful.

A good point is the early kicks, they were quality kicks with a good kick-chase. Penned us back and waited for the error. Then compare that with our kicking game........enough said.

So, now I have prompted everyone to analyse the statistics more closely it's fair to say that because Bailey's first stint came at a period when Leeds didn't have the ball his 6 drives are actually, no comparison to kirke's lazy effort the other week.

In fact, the 30 tackles are far more indicative of his work rate.

We're getting there people, keep up the good work.

At times I wonder if we are deliberately keeping a little too much fuel in the tank. When we were under the pump in the first quarter the backs took so many drives in, which are ultimately less effective. Shouldn't we be expecting our forwards to take more drives in when we are under severe pressure trying to clear our own lines?

I appreciate that this is a strategy that has previously worked, but we are in a situation now where every league point is vital. It's a shame that we have dropped 4 points against Crusaders and HKR, as they have the same value as the 4 we picked up against Saints and Warrington.

With a little more consistentcy and application we could already have been 3rd....

That's the point I was trying to make.

Good to have you back old boy.

think you'd have to analyse Kirke's time in action in a similar way to be able to come to the conclusion that you have otherwise you're tarring yourself with the samebrush as those that you have berated.

Getting away from the patronising and self righteous mode.

That's not what has been said at all.

What has been said is that the number of carries in the match is the second highest number of carries that Leeds have had as a team this year.

Despite that high number of carries we have one player who matches the same number of carries as a player last week, who was critisized for it.

That player last week in getting his six last week, was part of a team that carried the ball 25 times less than the players this week.

There was however a case where during the first stint of one player this week, the whole Leeds team had limited carries which needs to be taken into account. On that basis though, what also needs taking into account is that as there was low carries in the first quarter, there was an extremely high amount of carries in the other three quarters in comparison to other games, and therefore whoever was doing low carries in the first stint would have had every opportunity to redeem themselves in their second stint.

In the interests of fairness it should also be pointed out that Kirke came on against Saints at a time when the momentum shifted away from us, and Saints had most of the ball for the rest of the first half, not too dissimilar to the first 15 minutes at Hull KR.

You could also say that a player who knocked on and gave away a penalty in the first 20 minutes contributed his fair share to the lack of ball Leeds had in the opening exchanges

You're assuming I haven't.

I have to leave for a train soon so have no time to knit your fog today Gotcha.

Yes and I'm sure he realises it which makes the comment somewhat disingenuous.