The backline of Leeds have still got it and minus Senior will still have it for another 2/3 years.

Its the front row that needs a shake up imo. There is no doubt about it that if you give the Likes of Burrow, McGuire, Webb, Smith and Hall space to play with they will rip the opposition apart.

The pack has let us down massively this year. Every week somebody says on Tvocs stat thread 'what would we do without JP' well on Saturday we found out. Look at our props apart from JP who gives us good yardage? Answer is nobody. The props are pretty mediocre. The 2nd rowers have an element of class in them. But they rely on the props to get them on the front foot a little.

The squad aint a bad one at all. There is just one missing piece in the jigsaw and that is a powerful hard running prop to pair with JP and the bit of work Kylie is doing. Look at Saints, they wanted to take a bit of heat of Graham so they signed Josh Perry. Job done. What a signing. With the cap space left by Eastwood and Donald Leeds really need to bring in a good prop. You don't even have to look overseas. There is plenty in the 'lesser' sides than can do a job for Leeds and will jump at the opportunity.

Neither really.

Do I have concerns?

Yes - mainly that we need to find someone to share the workload with JP next year, and take on the role in the coming years.

Do I suscribe to the opinion that this set of players are done?

No - they are 3 time Champions, have beaten all the top sides this year and over the last 4 years have played more games than anyone else, except maybe Saints. There is plenty left in this squad.

Do I think Delaney is the worst signing we have ever made, a poor player and not fit for the Champions?

No

Do I think we should panic and turn Lee Smith into a stand off?

No

Do I think Rob Burrow should be released because he's no longer good enough?

No - although he has had a poor year

Do I think Danny Buderus is a waste of money?

No

Do I think Ian Kirke should be put in stocks outside Leeds Town Hall because he missed a tackle?

No

Basically, I trust Gary Hetherington to make decisions which will benefit the club in the short and long term. I have watched Leeds for long enough to know that this set of players are very special. I don't always agree with decisions that are made but I'm not stupid enough to think that I always know better than people involved at the highest level.

Whilst we havent played Wigan and Warrington every week, Wigan and Warringtons improvement and consistancy is the reason they are top of the league and we are further back, had they not improved so much we would likely still be challenging for top spot and i doubt we would be having this conversation.

And as i said we arent as good as last year, but many things have worked against us to exaggerate the difference. This is a team game and issues we have suffered as a team have affected the form of individuals and it becomes a bit of spiral.

I still think the spine of the team as good as any in SL, and there isnt major surgery that is needed. I think we need to look at the front row as i said, and maybe the 2nd row could be a bit fresher, but we get that in place and im sure we will see Kirke, JJB, Smith, Burrow etc looking much much better, we seem to be trying to do what we did against tired teams before we have bothered to tire them out, thats our problem

Some of that will be in Lee Smith's back pocket for sure

It would not be if every team were the same as this year - the problem is most sides have strengthened - Leeds on the other hand look a weaker side with a crop of players all ageing together.

All clubs have had similar injury problems to Leeds so I think that is a red herring. The league position reflects the performances this year which - in the main - have been uninspiring. The way Wigan dominated the Rhinos at Headingley showed the gulf between the two sides and the less said about Saturday the better, let's put it down to an off day.

The writing is on the wall - failure to strengthen and signing the likes of Ali, Senior, Kylie, Diskin suggests priorities for 2011 lie elsewhere. Given the better squads at Wigan, Saints and Warrington I fail to see how this ageing squad can be expected to compete at the real top level next season.

I thought this was a very strong squad for this year - but I was proved wrong.

It's inaccurate to suggest that the club have made no changes during the last couple of seasons. Perhaps someone can list those newcomers that played well on Saturday (some of them world class) or, failing that, explain to me how further signings of similar quality would have made a difference on Saturday (unless at least one of them happened to be a barnstorming prop).

Just taking these two quotes, I agree with Gotcha and I disagree with slim. I think 2005 was the strongest year ever at the top of Super League in that we had three of the best ever SL teams. Leeds were World Club Champions and at the start of that season they played IMO the best rugby ever seen in SL. I remember going to watch Warrington play at Headingley and seeing us getting played off the park, and this was not a bad Warrington team, we had Gleeson in his prime and Fa'afili who scored shedloads of tries that year and we finished 4th in the league. We got destroyed by Leeds by the best display of offloading I can remember. Right in the first minute, Leeds got awarded a penalty straight in front of the posts, Sinfield just demanded the ball and tapped and ran it straight away, there was no way he was going to waste time kicking for two. For one spell in the game, every tackle we made even with 2/3 men in the tackle, the ball came out somehow and went to hand, and there was an inevitability that Leeds would work their way up the field and finish off with a try, they were just clinical and ruthless but played great rugby as well. The South Stand started singing "thats why we're champions" and the people round me in the Wire end were all pretty much in agreement with them. I remember looking on this forum after the match and seeing someone say that in all his years of watching Leeds he'd never seen rugby like this and he had to thank Tony Smith for bringing it. Now we are saying the same thing about Smith in Warrington.

But also in SL that year you had Bradford in the second half of the year who were unstoppable, with Hape and Vainikolo scoring 4 tries a game between them, and they had Peacock, Pryce and also Morley at the end of the season. And Saints finished top of the league with Cunningham having possibly his most consistent season and Jamie Lyon in his first year when he was Man of Steel. Wire were 4th but we were a million miles behind the top three in terms of class.

I don't think in recent years SL has been anything like as competitive at the top end, although the middle-lower end has toughened up compared to where it was in 2005 with sides like Leigh and Widnes who were easy meat. The three clubs at the top have all gone into decline from where they were in 05, with Bradford it was dramatic, with Saints they won the double in 2006 but after that they slipped a bit, still strong but not quite what they were. I would say the same about Leeds, even though they've won three Grand Finals in a row I'd say its been a consequence of Leeds holding fairly steady whilst other top teams have slipped. I would fancy Leeds team in 04-05 to have beaten the team of 08-10 any day. I'm not trying to denigrate Leeds achievements since 2007, they have still been the best team, but I think Leeds have cashed in on a slip at the top end of SL and won three Grand Finals out of it. All in all I think if you had put any of the Leeds Grand Final winning teams of 2007-2009 in the 2005 season they would have finished 4th.

You could also say the same thing about Warrington cashing in with two Challenge Cups, if this current Warrington team had been around in 04-06 sort of era, then it would have made the top end of SL incredibly tough, but I don't think we would have won any trophies.

They wouldn't. Saturday was the the result of 3 things:

1, bad day at the office

2, Expossed in the front row. (the barnstorming prop)

3, Warrington we're red hot. They played the best they will do for a long time and they had an element of luck on there side - Bounce of the ball, a couple of ref decisions. How many times did we get over the line and not score? The rugby gods we're on their side alright.

Who are Sinfield, Burrow and McGuire being "shadowed" by?

Clarkson and Ward for LF and SO, There doesnt seem to be a replacement for Burrow at the club, but Mcguire can play there and we are a good 4 or 5 years from needing to replace them

Who has strengthened better than us? And with whom?

What has been the additions that made Wigan suddenly far better over the season than everyone else? I know it seems that someone from another planet swapped the likes of Pat Richards, Amos Roberts and that fat hooker with pod people duplicates who can actually play rugby but they are the same personel as last year (as hard as it is to believe).
Saints signed Soliola, I can't think of anyone else unless they signed Peletua this season?

We added a young centre from the NRL with a solid reputation and finally took delivery of our NZ international back row forward. Seems comparable to me - especially as we got Lee Smith back almost immediately.

If Leeds are 4th (and they are) then Warrington must be 3rd (and they are.)

Making the Challenge Cup Final was a big target and that was achieved. If Leeds can beat Hull and make 4th I think that represents a reasonable season to date. Losing and finishing 6th will be a disappointment.

Leeds' season isn't over yet.



How long have Michael Maguire and Tony Smith been at those respective clubs.

The most important signing any club will ever make IMO is that of head coach. Get that call right (Michael Maguire) and the job becomes easier in every department, get it wrong (Steve McNamara) and the opposite.

He never said so much strengthened better, he said strenghened. And he was talking about 2011 not 2010.

For example, have saints not been better than us this season with an injury list the equal if not worse than ours? Yet they have added Englands number 1 centre, and an Australian test prop to it, together with the signing they made for this season who has been out all season in Soliola.

For example, Wigan have just more or less walked the league. Yet have added 3 quality NRL players to replace 3 former NRL players of a much lower ability.

All centres in SL should be able to tackle. A class centre certainly is able to tackle, score tries and make a lot of opportunities for his winger. The term "defensive centre" says it on the tin - they are deficient in attacking skills and creativity otherwise they would be decribed in a different way. I am not witchhunting Delaney and have already stated he was one of our better players on Saturday. However both Warrington centres displayed much better allround performances than our two and with Seniors days coming to an end we are now lacking some class at centre.

Given the amount of tripe you've written over the years, I'd rather listen to Gotcha than you!

If you cast your mind back to the pre-season, this was being hyped as the strongest Leeds SL squad ever. On paper it is. My own thoughts are:

1) We put far too much emphasis on the WCC, at the expense of some dreadful performances around that game in the league. Losses against poor teams are not easy to claw back over the course of a season. I don't think this is exaggerating, you only have to look back at the comments of a number of players and Bluey himself to see that eyes were fixed firmly on the WCC from day one.

2) Injuries have really hurt. We lost a couple of other games due to lacking just too many first 17 players. That can be excused - e.g. Wigan away.

3) Wigan and Warrington are better sides than in previous years. They are both showing the benefit of better coaching and confidence.

4) Our team seems jaded and TBH have looked very unconvincing even when winning. To me the most telling game wasn't the final but the semi vs Sts. We looked good in patches in attack, but were dreadfully easy to open up in defence. Had Sts not blown a few opportunities we could easily have lost that game against a team with no halfback.

Bottom line is we don't seem to have great patterns in either attack or defence that have been sustained over a full 80 minutes except for the WCC. I have the strong impression that we've been trying to cruise through the season, trusting to find form 'when it counts'. That seemed to be the case last year, but we also won a lot more games and played better far more often.

To me that does smack of a complacency around the side. We can turn it around in the play offs, but if we go out early then this will have to go down as a poor season. Personally I don't buy that getting to the CC final is a great achievement if you get hammered when you get there. Had we lost narrowly then I'd be the first to say we gave it a great shot. As it is we were mullered, and nothing should cover that up.

BTW, I for one don't want to underestimate or overestimate the importance of the coach. I suspect that this Leeds team is very big on player power. To blame Bluey alone for all the failings this year would be harsh IMO. At the end of the year I think there are a few players who need to have a long look at themselves.

I was speaking with Wayne Godwin on bank holiday Monday at Xscape. I told him I was gutted, embarrassed, and well pished off with the side after that performance. He told me I should not be so hard and these players deserve a lot more credit than they got.

But he also agreed that many of this Leeds side have reached an end to what they are used to, conditioning wise. He said Leeds and Saints players have pushed their body's so hard over the last few years that what they have produced is phenominal. He argued that fans can not even begin to understand just what these players have been doing not only on the pitch but also in training, in order to achieve what they have. Everybody else is now trying to catch up also.

But what he made clear is that there is not much left in them, and it is not something that is going to come back, as their bodies are just battered. He even told me that as young as Ryan Hall is (he is a mate of his), that he will be surprised if he manages another 4 or 5 years. He said Ryans body is breaking up every week, and he is been patched up week after week. He said the intensity that these players have played at can not be matched continuously. He said that Jamie Peacock and Keith Senior don't even feel pain like other players anymore, as they are constantly riddles with pain anyway, even in the close season. When those two feel pain, it is real pain he said, and that Peacock probably came off at Cas not even thinking twice that it might be a bad injury.

What he said is exactly what I have been saying and others for quite a while now. It does not matter diddly squad what the birth date on a birth certificate says. You can not make a body do something extra when it has had enough. That is exactly what quite a few of these players are facing now.

I wont be surprised if Ryan Hall is still playing when he is 26.

Same here i don't thi nk Ryan is as "biscuit boned" as Godwin.

I agree with pretty much all of that. A very good and fair assesment indeed imo.



I also agree with what Gotcha is saying also, I've thought for a while we are paying the price for the super efforts of the last 3 seasons, it takes a super human effort in a salary capped era to be champions 3 times in a row

Brent webb told me he'd be suprised if rob burrow doesn't suffer from severe brain damage when he retires due to the amount of concussions he's suffered. His bodies at the limit. The point of no return.

Now he wonders round like a zombie, only physically and mentally able to cope with the game. Anything else, like a conversation, or wlking to the shops is too much. His body is that battered.

I imagine in the future, as people CONSTANTLY want the game faster and harder it will become like rollerball. A plyer will have a lifespan of 4 or 5 games.....before they die.

Lauititi told me his body is so battered up, he doesn't feel feelings anymore.

Indeed it was. I would muster by many who are now calling for it to be dismantled.

I do recall suggesting titles like "Leeds greatest ever squad" should be reserved until seasons end to see what they have actually done.

Some short memories on here.

to f*** off and stop going through his bins at night.

Me included in that. I still thought a few weeks back that we had enough this year to win both trophies also. I've always maintained it would be 2011 that we would see the real decline in this side, unless changes were made.

So yeah, I also believed it was the strongest squad. To be fair, it still probably was, considering the amount of injuries we have had, who knows.



Indeed you did. Although I don't recall anybody saying "Leeds greatest ever", but the strongest you said as above.