If our forwards hadn't have performed so well you might have found yourselves with more tries.

My problem is not necessarily the performances in the league per se, but that we've Leeds have had 4 "big" games this season, the Manly game, the 2 Saints game and now the Bradford game and we havent performed in any of them yet.

I thought Rhinos fans didn't see the Bradford game as a big one anymore.

Thats only when Mick is on here. And even if you take out the Bradford game our win ratio from the other "big" games is still the same!

Yeah. On paper your forwards are pretty good butagainst us, manly and saints they seemed to be bullied and the opposing forwards were able to control the game. I'll say what I said at the start of the season - Our pack is sone of, if not the best pack in the league.

Always amazes me how many fans - our own included - will look for almost any excuse, however tenuous, rather than credit the opposition - who they have convinced themselves are beneath them - with actually playing quite well and outplaying them on the day.

No, makes you feel better for some reason if you instead say the opposition was crap, but were were even more crap.

Funny, isn't it?

Yep i'd agree with that. We are lacking a forward in Eastwood but even aside from that I dont think our forwards have been as good as they should be so far this season. We havent seen Leulaui knocking people flying or doing big runs, Peacock, while his work rate may still be high its not to the same quality we'd expect, Burgess is still a young lad and I worry about giving him too much work to do and Bailey has shown both his pros and cons in the last few weeks in that he nearly, singlehanded, got us back in the game against Saints in the league, but hasnt done much else.

Not too sure what the stats are, but I reckon we must have beaten you something like 8 or 9 out of the last 10 meets, which probably accounts for the shocked reaction to last nights scoreline.

We had not beaten you at Odsal since 2003, before last night



We've had a bit more success at Headingley, but don't have the stats to hand.

Bradford V Leeds @ Odsal (League & Play-off) since 2000

Bradford - 8
Leeds - 8
Drawn - 1

Bradford V Leeds @ Headingley since 2000 (League & Play-off)

Bradford - 7
Leeds - 6

Interestingly the average is just in favour of Leeds by decimals though. If we add in one more SL match before 2000 We win

In fairness, I'd say the period 2004 onwards - i.e. the season after we won the lot including the kitchen sink - is more relevant to the current discussion? What are the stats for that period at Headingley, to save me looking them up?

I don't really want to take it away from Bradford, but I'm going to. We were garbage last night, and Bradford were ever so slightly better. A Bradford with Solomona, Morrison and Deacon would have put the cleaners through us IMO. That was one of the worst performances we've come up with in the last 5 years.
But who cares? We'll recover, probably finish 2nd in the league and then probably make Old Trafford. We shouldn't play that badly again, and hopefully we can take it to Saints at Old Trafford again.

I care, and i hope that Brian McClennan, Francis Cummins, Willie Poching, Jason Davidson and Aleks Gross aswell as all the First Team squad care aswell...

Quite.

The psychological advantage you gain from winning pretty much all your games - especially at home and in cup competitions is massive. Look at the advantage Saints have mentally over Warrington at the moment, and over Wigan (which was the exact opposite not so long ago).
I read a piece from Trevor Watson many years ago after an embarrasing defeat at Headingley in the early 80's (Featherstone I think), he said "teams used to turn up at Leeds, get changed, lose, and go home". If you can part beat a team before they get out on the pitch why not? If your opposition know that you can get sloppy, not turn up sometimes, or not really worry about the odd game here and there then will always come into a game positive against you.

In fact much worse IIRC they had won 5 and lost 5 so there*s no need to panic just yet.

What is this fascination with St Helens. And St Helens went on to become Champions last year, didn't they?

There are 8 rounds completed so far (not 10) and after 8 rounds St Helens record was 5 wins to 3 losses but they were still in the Challenge Cup.

Leeds on the other hand at that same point had the WCC in the Trophy cabinet, a 7 wins to 1 loss SL record (scoring 270 points and conceding 80) and still in the Challenge Cup.

Do you see any difference to this season yet?