Thought you might know that... everyone seems to know them by there real names...

A State of Trance..
Ari Gold...

who cares about record score in 1935 by the country cousins in some penal colony

So... if Burrow, Buderus, Lauitiiti, Smith, and Bailey don't make it what team would you go with?

1.Donald
2.Watkins
3.Gibson
4.Senior
5.Hall
6.Sinfield
7.McGuire
8.Leuluai
9.Diskin
10.Peacock
11.Jones-Buchanan
12.Kirke
13.Ablett

14.McShane
15.Allan
16.Burgess
17.Manning

Looks a bit light on the ground ay



Hopefully the crutches were precaution though for Smith and Bailey will pass his cog test. Also lets hope the other 3 were just nursing knocks.

Then I would go with this team:

Smith
Donald
Watkins
Senior
Hall
McGuire
Burrow
Leuluai
Diskin
Peacock
Lauitiiti
Jones-Buchanan
Sinfield

Burgess
Kirke
Buderus
Allan

If we play with this squad, then i can see it being a rampage by Manly.

If we play with this squad then i can actually seeing us win by 7

Keep the faith with the fans roaring them on and bluey doing his churchill type team talk the lads will retain the title

Was at the Harlequins vs Manly game today and when the put their full side out (for the second half) they were more than a bit good!

If we have too many knocks and put anything much less than a full side out (okay no Webb is a given) and given our obvious rustiness in attack I fear we are in for a bit of a tonking

My fears exactly.

Also at the game today and don't agree totally with Highbury Rhino's assessment. Thought Manly were very light weight in the forwards and the Quins forwards were on top today. The difference was the speed of the backs, especially the full back who will need to be watched carefully. Our defence outwide is generally quite poor anyway so I expect Leeds to be able to deal with it.

After seeing that today, I fully expect a comfortable Leeds victory on Sunday.

Well the fact that I have found out that Quins 2nd half team was like a reserve team has made me feel better. Why did they do this though? Would it not have been better served to each play the reserve-ish team in the 1st and then have the strongest for the 2nd? Would have made a better game.

You are right about Brett Stewart though. Easily the best attacking FB in the World IMO.

He ripped us apart tbh.

It was a reasonable game actually, the Manly second string was very poor indeed, key Quins players were rested towards the end. I'm not sure why Manly did it the way they did really.

I don't expect us to win this year. Manly seem to be up for this a lot more than any other sides recently. We have a few injuries. Having said that defensively we look strong, and I think we will see a few injured players back for this game.

I'm gradually learning not to write us off in big games. This, contrary to the knockers' views, will be a big game. Big crowd, good teams, silverware on the line. It may be the least important of the 3 main trophies on offer, but it's still a trophy.

Manly are a good side, but may be rusty, Leeds just haven't really hit form yet this year. Regardless of what you thought of the refs performance on Friday, discipline will have to be tighter against Manly. If we give them the kind of field position we gave KR we will get hammered. I hope we can get Burrow fit for the game, as well as Smith. I feel that we need all the attcking options we can get our hands on for this one.

Hard to call, in the absence of any real form. I'll go for Manly by 8, but I wouldn't be at all surprised to be wrong!

Does anyone know how Ali is getting on.

Having Ali, Burrow and Buderus adds a huge amount of creativity to the 17 who played against KR

still think we will win but close

your long lost cousins missed the boat

I think Leeds will just sneak the win.

I haven't a clue what's going to happen!! Usually I get a feeling how it's going to go, or what kind of game to expect, but with this one, I got nothing!! I don't have a great deal of NRL knowledge (or knowledge in general

) and Leeds' form isn't giving much away. I mean we've hardly hit a great deal of form. The first two games we weren't out of second gear, but the Hull game was a serious test, and even though we weren't at out best, we found the way to dig in, and come back with the two points. Not an easy thing to do. Plenty of work to do, but the disruption with injuries and conditions was never going to allow an expanded game. But there is one huge factor we have going for us at the minute, defence. Our goal line defending has been nothing short of manful and effective, no-ones hiding, and teams are struggling to post points past us. 2 trys leaked in 3 games makes for excellent reading.

League express say we could be without 7 this week and thats with no mention of Bailey.

Webb (obv.), Burrow, Buderus, Lauitiiti, Smith, Peacock and Ablett according to McClennan.

Burrow,buderus,peacock will all play bailey will depend on his cog test as for ali,wasp and ablett i've no idea how serious their injuries are.

TBF I expect Lauiti'iti, Burrow and Buderus to play as they could have at the weekend but he wanted to give them a week extra off. What do you know about Peacock? What's he done?

Reckon the whole crutches thing with Wasp (

) was just a precaution to keep the weight off his ankle and improve recovery time. Sounds like Bailey will be in anyway as his name wasnt mentioned.

Sky showed him on the bench with an ice pack on his hand but as we all know JP won't let that get in his way!!

Looks like Mr Lister and I don't see eye to eye on this. Quins were out muscled, out thought and generally completely outplayed in that second half and IMHO would have been had Quins kept all their front line troops on for the whole game.

It seems to me that with a fully fit and fully firing Rhino's team we'd give them a real game and be in with a shout of winning. But with injuries stacking up and us not quite firing on all cylinders anyway I think we will struggle. Our best chance will be to defend and scrap all the way and hope that match fitness built over the last 3 weeks will see us home in the last 15-20 minutes. If we let them get away from us in the first half (which is a real possibility) we will not be able to get it back.

Mind you I thought we'd get tonked by Saints at OT last October so what do I know?

Having watched the QRL v Manly game am of the view that the boys from Oz are far from the powerhouse they were on Grand Final day.

However, if all their stars click think they will be a bit to strong for The Rhino's next Sunday. They are a bit weak on the right side and the pack is not at full strengh.

Still it's only the view of RL fan from The Smoke but one who's watched the game across rge world for 60+ years.

I was at the game yesterday and Manly's second half performance was pretty impressive. Their backs are very quick and punish mistakes. It has to be borne in mind that in the second half quins did play their 'reserve team', so hard to judge just how good Manly are.

I think if we're fully fit then we can beat them - our defensive work so far this season has been pretty impressive. We will need to keep the penalty count down as well and I think we'll need a good kicking game as in the grand final.

Peacock could barely walk second half, he hobbled back to the in goal after one of our scores