That's yours and more importantly England's problem, Sinfield seems to be currently seem as untouchable at stand off where as there's many other players more suited/capable of playing that position, not only in the Leeds team but thorought Superleague!!!

Sinfield should be playing Loose Forward his best position by a country mile, you should have a specialist half back at 6 and if he us one of the youngsters then so be it.

As much as I cannot stand McGuire for his petulance, we in RL are a family so wish him a speedy recovery.

Cheers.
Whilst many will point to the fact we have won a zillion GF`s with Sinfield at SO.
I can not for the life of me see it as his best position.
Surely you need a bit of pace to play there or am I out of touch?
I think he needs to stay in the team but not at SO.
Burrow maybe should get a bench spot but at the moment is killing our attack at hooker.
I am also a big fan of Hall but at the moment he is missing tackles cant break a tackle and has not even scored many tries from 10 yards out like he has done in the past

Where Sinfield/Sutcliffe are listed on the teamsheet is irrelevant, it's how they are expected to play.

Sinfield will not play as a ball-carrying loose forward, and neither will he defend in the middle of the field. Hence Sutcliffe, whose game is suited to neither of those, is being used in that way despite being much better suited to operating as a pivot.

True. You have to bear in mind that whatever the team sheet says, whether Sinfield is at loose or SO, he's playing the same role.
The more tangible change was that the tactics went from pivots at 6,7 and 13 to pivots at 6, 7 and 1. Sometimes it's 6, 7,13 and 1. Sinfield plays the same role in attack as always anyway.

The question would be can any coach be able to say, "Kev, we want you to do this - defend in the middle because you haven't got the pace to cover out wide, fill in at 9 while we spell our hooker and on attack carry the ball and use your offload game and kick our goals. And, we'll spell you as well so you won't play the full 80 - you haven't got the gas for it anymore. We want to look at other options at 6 and use another playmaker".

He was excellent as an offloading 13, he defended superbly up the middle as he was tireless and smart - always reading the attack beautifully. You can't go back in time, but I believe if a coach with big b""lls came along and was brave enough to spell him he could play like that again for 60 minutes every week. Then we could get some speed in the halves again and look to develop the next generation of pivot players while extending Kev's career for the foreseeable future.

Finally someone has said it!!! I have been alluding to this for a while but dare not say it outright as I am not a seasoned threader and feared I would be hung outside the town hall if I dare mention utilising our captain in his strongest position and not the one he plays in for in internationals .
Your right though McDermott will not do this they are too close . Makes you wonder who wears the trousers

Bad injury hope he recovers quickly.

Sinfield will never go back to 13 with this Coach in charge, shocking, spineless, predictable and tactically inept.

And one of the most successful coaches we've had.

You're an absolute plank.

The dust hasn't settled on McGuires injury and the usual knee jerkers have destined McGuire for the scrap heap.

Classic.

Welcome to Southstander.

Beware of twitchy knees, ringpeices and bottom lips.

What came first, Chicken or Egg?

Theses same players were already successfull before the coach was appointed. Unless you have only been watching last couple of years?

Right well let's no bother with a coach then.

If he gets personal attacks when the team is losing, but people put any success down to the players what's the point.

This must be how the Chelsea FC forum feels....

You could have coached that team to success over last couple of years.

The bigger test is how to maintain it. That is the area it looks like McDermott will fail in.

That seems to have been the Hetherington approach since Tony Smith left at the end of 2007.

When the captain retires perhaps his appointment will be made official?

..until then we have to muddle through with a puppet government coach? Great

No it hasn't.

Yeah I wish we could go back to the Tony Smith days. The days when we went 31 months without winning anything, and failed to succeed in any of the 10 competitions from WCC '05 to GF '07 (and won only 4 out of a possible 15 titles during his reign)....even though he wasn't faced with an ageing squad and got given signings McDermott could only dream about.

He also replaced more than half the side that won the GF in 2004 by 2007. Mathers, Calderwood, Walker, Bai, McDermott, Poching, Ward, McKenna and Furner had all been replaced.

TBH I think until the hooker situation gets sorted, its really hard to tell which players still 'have it' and which don't. I find it hard to believe that a player who has never relied on speed in Sinfield could suddenly become ineffective, even with a heavier workload in defence.

I'd say that the whole team is stuttering on attack - and making some good players look very average in the process - because our acting half isn't playing well.

That's right - the Tony Smith days when it looked like the players were being coached during the week when it came to their performances on a weekend. A team that cared about their final League placings, a team that went out to entertain the fans not bore them into submission, a team who could score from all over and mount a defence that didn't rely on hero plays. Something Huddersfield fans will no doubt have noticed from his time there just as the Warrington fans will have noticed since he replaced James Lowes.

Playing entertaining rugby was not something that was apparent at London under Brian McDermott though.

I wonder whatever happened to Jimmy and Brian?

They won the last two Grand Finals.

One of them against Tony Smith's Warrington.

HTH

Steady on, you'll be wanting the guy with 13 on his back to play LF, 7 to be SH and 9 to be hooker.
That would never do as it doesn't fit with what appears to be McD's ethos of deconstructing the pivot roles and awarding bits of each role to who he imagines can handle it.
Hence we see Burrow wasted at dummy half, Sinfield being the conduit for just about everything and McShane playing half a game.
These are talented players and they have done well to cope with the coach's notions but they could be used so much better.

Some high end silliness here, the bottom line is this, if you ask a Reliant Robin to win Le Mans it won't.

If you ask an idiot to Coach a team like Leeds with players reaching the twilight of their career with skills diminishing you get a Reliant Robin, if you play Burrow at 9 you also get a flat front tyre.

What?

Worst bottom line ever, worse than Adele's.