Oh dear, time to hang up the boots.

At least we now have a better idea of what the Widnes team will look like next season

He was right though.

Keith will still get a gig at Wakefield/Widnes/Cas/HKR/Quins.

Tait
Currier
Davies
Wright
Offiah
Myler
D. Hulme
Grima
McKenzie
Pyke
Sorensen
P. Hulme
Eyres

?

I now once and for all do truly believe that Gotcha is the best troll of all time.

My sincere apologies for upsetting you so much. Fancy expressing an opinion on a internet forum. Had I known that was not the place, you can rest assured it would not have happened.

Now that you have given such a great reason to change that opinion, how do I go about removing my post.

He was right about it and I agreed with that assessment at the time. Unfortunately for him, his opinion back then has come right back to bite him on his now furious @rse.

The sequence of events may have been unpredictable but the result wasn't. When the Celtic Crusaders scarpered for their lives out of South Wales up to North Wales and renamed themselves Crusaders, that was the time for the RFL to pull the plug rather than bail them out to the tune of 700K. The expansion of SL into Wales had already failed and it was just a matter of time before the final execution. Situating a club just down the road from Widnes is hardly expansion.

If merger money had still been available last year like it was for Hudds/Sheff and Hull/Gateshead, I'm absolutely convinced that Widnes and Crusaders would have merged to form the Widnes Viking Crusaders in SL with most games played in Widnes and a few down the road in Wrexham. Another year on, and the merged entity would have become Widnes Vikings full stop. Expect more than a handful of the current Crusaders players to end up at Widnes next season.

We got there in the end via a different route and it cost 700K rather than over a million

Oh the irony..

I memory will stick will me regarding Keith Senior - he decision to play in the 2005 CC Final when he knew he wasn't fit.

Whilst he may not be greedy he is certainly selfish - that decision helped to prevent his team mates from winning a trophy that should have been within their compass.

His smugness about how they got rid of successive coaches speaks volumes for his character.

As the saying goes "What comes around goes around"

Excellent stuff

Given what else he achieved in a Leeds shirt, that seems roughly akin to remembering Sinfield's contributions solely based on his decision to run the penalty at the end of the 2003 final.

Let's not remember the 4 Grand Finals, 2 WCCs and 2 hubcaps we did win. Instead, let's remember the one we didn't win....

Are you attempting to f*** Keith Senior over?

Excuse his language BUT that's some b****** joke, surely?

Sinfield's was a 50/50 call in the heat of battle - Senior's was a calculated decision of sheer selfishness

Not at all - are you saying any of the above is incorrect?

Your are the Gotcha person and I claim my £5

the final choice was the coach. he is the one paid big bucks to make decisions

At worst all that Senior did was to put himself forward for selection, its up to the medical and coaching staff to assess and select him and with such an injury its a simple enough thing to assess - akin to Matt Adamson offering himself to play with a fractured cheekbone in a challenge cup final in the hope that his opposite number wouldn't notice and "accidently" catch him in the face in the first tackle - most teams field players who are carrying injuries every week, its part of the game.

Viewed another way, both were gambles that didn't pay off.

In my book the gamble with Senior (who doesn't pick the side by the way) only really and truly backfired when McKenna got injured, which was a shade unlucky.

Strange, I remember that he went off at half time and it was in the second half that Bai had a brain fart and threw the ball on the floor for Whiting, and then I remember Sinfield softcocking a tackle to let Cooke in late on...

I also remember the fact that an unfit Keith at the time was better than anything Hull had.

Can anyone explain why Keith playing cost us that game?

And I remember Tony Smith, in eccentric mode, selecting 2 props in the Leeds 17.

I am going to say no, because he didn't. IMHO of course.

Would having Barrie on with Ganson reffing have helped one jot? I don't think it would.

And for what it's worth, Ali's Bai's and McKinna's go forward should in practise have more than made up for only two props on paper.

And but for a brainfart and a bit of Motu Tony magic, I'd say it did.

Out of interest, and to avoid any accusations of bias. Why have you completed ignored the fact that it is was a boiling hot day, and Leeds tired. Short of players due to been a man short, was a major factor in that. In case it escapes peoples memories we were winning the game until late on.

Being.

Simple. A game of RL is a complex thing, involving the interactions of 34 players, 2 coaching teams of varying numbers, 4 match officials (the above being crudely divided into physical and mental elements), atmospheric condidtions, actions of an unpredictable oval ball and no doubt a few other bits and pieces I can't be bothered to think of now. The outcome is decided by a succession of incidents, of varying moment, some of which may go in one side or another's favour and some of which will have more impact than others.

This, however, is quite difficult to get your head around so it is easier to choose one or two of those interactions and incidents which seemed like they were quite important and imagine that reversing those would have certainly reversed the outcome.

We may be right, we may be wrong. The important thing is never to acknowledge that we'll never really know either way.

Simples.