Spot on.

Our slump has nothing to do with not having an assistant coach or a lack of structures. It has everything to do with injuries and loss of form.

Form is an elusive thing and when it turns bad there is no simple cure and there is not much the coaches can do about it. Players often try too hard to turn around a spell of bad form and all it does is prolong it. You play best when relaxed and confident and not when you are aware of how bad you have been or when you can hear the crowd getting at you. When several players lose form together it makes the whole team look poor.

Sinfield is an example of a player who has been so consistent and perhaps has only lost form once or twice in his whole career. But loss of form does not suddenly make an outstanding player a bad one. Take Andy Murray who sailed through the first week of Wimbledon playing tremendous tennis. A couple of days later his shot timing and foot positions were all wrong and he lost in three straight sets. It happens to the best in all sports. Add to this several injuries and you have the position Leeds are in now.

Not a time to lay blame on the coach or right-off proven class players IMO. The players and coaches will be working so hard to correct the errors and I believe as this slump has continued we are one game nearer the return of key injured players and also one game nearer a return to form.

Whilst I do not want Mac to be fired I feel we are not getting the best out of our threequarter line. Which in my opinion is the best in super league.
Hence my feeling we would benefit with the use of a dedicated offense coach,especially as we are rapidly coming to the business end of the season.
If we win any kind of silverware I will have been proved wrong and will be more than happy to admit so.
Even the challenge cup would in my opinion be classed as a success story.

A coach with any pride would have walked after Friday's shambolic performance against a team who let's face it are basically a collection of everyone else's cast-offs including several of Leeds' own - one which Leeds have destroyed twice previously this season.

His pre-match dressing-room instruction to Bailey appeared to consist of which combination of punches to throw and he had a smile on his face before being interviewed on the pitch post-match. Hardly the actions or appearance of a man under any pressure (internally) at work.

It would presumably cost money to replace our distinctly average (IMO) head coach therefore I'd rate his job among the safest in Super League.

Plume and davidson may as you say have clout at the club, but have they got the skill and talent. We can take davidson out of the equation as he is the fitness and condition trainer. Which on balance we seem to be fit enough so no complaints there.
So that leaves us with plume, looking at his track record on the rhinos site he has no experience of top level coaching.
Surely it must benefit Mac to have some some fresh thinking about the place, even if it just takes a bit of pressure from his shoulders.
It might be that he does not want anybody else,pehraps he feels he will succeed on his own. Once again nobody on this site at the moment is right or wrong until the season end. When we will discover who wins the silverware .
Obviously the wire game is hugely important , this as a benchmark as to our form this season as to performing in must win games. I see in the yorkshire post JP has said he is sick and tired of losing close games this season. So the players are obviously feeling frustrated.

THIS

It is madness that people are comparing us negqatively to Saints (and their 40 point margin shellackings) or Wigan (shipping nearly 40 points to Wakey and Cas)

We have a perfect storm of poor form & injuries, and but for goalkicks & the VR feeling slightly saner, we'd have beaten both Wakefield & Huddersfield.

Quit whining and get behind the team.

Top and bottom of it, a coach will never get sacked if he is achieving his goals!

In 3 years BMac has won 2 GF's, won 1 WCC, has 2 CC final appearances, with league finishes of 5th, 5th and 3rd.

In his fourth year we are currently 2nd and are in the semi-final of the CC.

So if someone would please tell me what else the coach has to do to keep his job, I'm all ears?

A different spin IF we went out in the CC semi and don't reach GF would be that two years on trot we have won nothing and not been in the major finals.

You are only as good as your last match, and your next one is the one that counts.

We will cross that bridge in October should it happen.

I'm addressing the 'here and now' as people are talking about sacking him now before the season has panned out!

I actually don't think one single person has suggested that.

Perhaps he's waiting for Wane to walk after he lost at the same ground just a few weeks before (and shipped 36 points in the process)

Or Tony Smith after his Wire team lost vs Bradford shipping in 34 points at Odsal, where only London and an Agar-led Wakey have lost this year.

Or Brown for losing away at HKR, Widnes and Catalans with a total points of - Scored 36 Conceded 122.

Well surely a thread titled the 'unsackable mac' and the OP's comments after week 19 would suggest otherwise.....

And the various other threads that pop up time and again suggesting its time to part ways with McDermott.

brian mac has never been accepted by the majority of our fans irrespective of his successes' and nor will he be either if he even landed a still possible double this season for our club

in a salary capped sport i would imagine that his coaching cv would be the envy of the majority of sl clubs and coaches out there and quite rightly so imo?

brian mac is playing the game of trying to deliver the trophies available under it's current play off format,as is every other sl coach,i do find it strange that we are having topics about sacking him whilst we are 2nd in the league and also in a cc semi final,although i suppose we could be doing much better at this stage and be actually top?

let's see how our season pans out before the waiting nails are hammered into his coffin

I am taking it you didn't read the opening post? He asked the question only, and kept his post to talk about no assistant coach input and the need for it.

I have not been happy with him since his second season. If he delivers the GF this year, not really bothered about CC, I will accept him. I said before season started this is now his team, and he deserves the credit if he is successful.

His previous trophies are irrelevant to me as it was other coaches teams, as argued previous years, and you could have coached them to success.

This year is his year. Last year was a write off with mistakes. This year is his team, and learnt from last years mistakes. I hope he succeeds. I doubt he will though.

So are you suggesting I am wrong in what I have said?

Maybe I read into his comments differently to you but the point still stands that people are always suggesting a change in regime, which IMO is head scratching...

Laughable comment

Yes I am suggesting you read wrong. The OP was talking about having no assistant coach, with no input to get a different perspective. He then suggested that because of no assistant, it makes the head coach unsackable mid term due to no one to step in as caretaker.

He wasn't saying sack him, but implying a degree of complacency with no challenge there.

Yes Printer we have already been through this little tit for tat before so need to continue it. I will stick with my view, as it is more realistic, is formed on what is in front of me rather than told, and doesn't involve sticking my head in the sand.

You are more than welcome to stick with your view though.

How predictable that having kept your negative head down for the first half of the season you should pop up when the team have lost form and lost players to injury. And how typical that you blame the coach for all our ills.

It was nice of you to share with us the dressing room pre-match team talk, I have to say I am surprised Big Mac let you in. If you regard our head coach as "distinctly average" it would be helpful in understanding what success in your opinion do you have to achieve to become above average? and which other SL coaches have achieved this rating during the three three years that BM has been our head coach?

I do not recall Brian McDermott taking the field at any stage against last Friday. The "shambolic performance", as you call it, was made by the players. Are you suggesting that any of these same players who have pride should also "walk"?

Perhaps your could share the benefit of your proud coaching experience and explain how an above average coach can overcome key player lack of form and injuries?

I've read the OP again a number of times now and you are right he never said the words 'sack him' but he did use a variation of words that would suggest the same thing!

Exactly, we have destroyed them twice already this season with a stronger team out but I guess you didn't praise the coach after those games?

A coach with any pride would continue the season and aim to win the Grand Final and the CC Final as a mid-season game against Wakefield, as any one with an ounce of knowledge of sport and super league knows, is pretty irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.

If Wakefield had played out of their skins and produced a fantastic performance then I would agree with your comments. But they were awful, to lose to that we had to play even worse and we, and the coach should be very unhappy about not collecting the points.

We have dropped points to Hudds, Wigan and Warrington recently, at the time certain people held on to their optimism because we had mostly "banker" games to come for the rest of the season and this would see us on course for 2nd spot at least. Not much use if we can't win these "banker" games though is it?
What we've seen is a slow decline in performance level during the mid part of the season, and that includes defensive intensity, attacking structure (now almost non-existant) and just plain intelligence and decision making. You can blame that on injuries if you want, but for example, not getting the ball to Watkins has been the hallmark of Leeds play apart from the early part of the season and that's now service resumed as normal. It smacks of a lack of really ingrained good behaviour from the players - as soon as we lose a few to injury structure has fallen apart and everyone reverts to type - which for many of these players is simply average displays with a lack of control and discipline, both with the ball and without it.

You cannot drop points like this, there are no positives, it was a poor performance that can't be defended.

I'm not sure why the Leeds coach should have walked after losing to Wakefield. if that's the case then Frayssinous, Radford, Betts, Grima & Wane should also have walked.

Because it's Leeds. Irrespective of how many players are missing we should be beating everyone by 40 and playing the most exciting rugby on the face of the planet. All else is failure.

It's a good job some of these posters weren't around in the halcyon days of Fox and Dewhirst in the early 80s. They would have topped themselves.

Every year I have mellowed towards McDermott. We are in a poor streak at the moment, but that's life certainly wouldn't want him sacked due to a loss at wakey. To give him credit he appears to have attempted to rest players this year which to me is a good sign that he learned from mistakes last year, and at the start of the year our defence was very good but there is no way that could be sustained all year. Not sure we will win anything this year but we should be there or there abouts which is all you can really ask for