people compare him to JJb but JJb had a few injuries in academy reserves then had mainly long run in team, had a few longer injuries over last 3 years but he is like 35-36. Ward is like Nigel wright (the games most expensive ever teenager) went to wigan and had injury after injury, then ended up at Huddersfield and went downhill even faster, massively talented natural gifted stand off the obvious successor to schoey as GB stand off and is career was over at around 23.
I hope stevie ward can get is career going, but another season like this one and last one and the season before, well its not good enough, hope it does not come to that but we cant carry a player who only plays 20-25% of the time.

Fairly sure ward played in the halves a lot in the academy. Not sure why we haven't tried him there, his body is clearly not up to playing in the pack.

Watkins and Ward the difference between us getting smashed by wire or keeping it close. Missing them both in defence and attack!

Stevie is a bright lad ,I think if he has yet another season like the last few he will call it a day. Lets hope not and good luck to him for an injury free 2018-19

I would rather see him move to LF and be a bit less physical.
He isn't big enough for the hits he tries to put in .seems to come off worse one or twice a season,often meaning long lay offs.

Ward's missed less games this season than Garbutt, one more than Delaney (who's gone off injured in a fair few he's played in) and 2 more than Ferres and JJB. The difference with him and Garbutt is at least when they are on the field they make a big difference as opposed to the rest who don't add much even when they are fit.

I don't disagree with re-evaluating the way Ward plays, but it would be a lot easier to cover for him if we didn't have a bunch of older players who are injury prone due to ageing as much as anything else.

Whilst I think our injury list would be better almost immediately if our forwards were younger, we need to also look at conditioning. Far too often we've had seemingly half fit players take the field, only to go off with injuries during the game. That's worse than them missing the game completely as we lose a sub, and its happened too often for it just to be bad luck.

JJB has had one serious injury this year (knee) taking him out for almost 3 months. Ward has had several different injuries the most worrying of which is recurring concussion. Maybe he could solve our centre problem where he would be more effective and less at risk to head injuries and our defence out wide will improve.

On a more general note about conditioning...Across superleague there has been lots of injuries, a large number being knees and ankles. Is there a general "over-conditioning" of players. I dont know the first thing about muscles and joints etc. But is it a problem, or coincidence?

The ground's been hard this year, which must surely add to or exacerbate joint and ground impact injuries.

Yes, and we all know how much Leeds prefer wet conditions for the big games too - I'm surprised no-one has trotted out this as an excuse for how poor we've been this year

It's still all down to the floods in Dec 2015 at the training ground. !

No it was the Kiwi money match or was it SPOTY or was it injuries

Burrow had a patch where he got a lot of concussions and that was looking pretty seriously like ending his career for a while. It can be bad luck, and I think you are right, they might be just giving him a proper chance to recover and not risk it getting any worse.

Apparently he was fit to return last week but then got ill. Due back this week.

That would be good news if true.
Put him at stand off and get Ablett back into the pack.

Last week (and for most of the season) we played without a standoff. We have very limited threat at the moment any team that can defend will do well against us, so if we are going to persist with a forward in the number 6 position (playing like a second loose forward) better that it's a quicker one like Stevie rather than a slower one like Carl.

If we want someone who can at least masquerade as a ball player, we should play Cuthbertson as a second pivot instead of an offloading forward, but if we do this then we definitely need to up our tackle effectiveness as we will put some ball down.

When the club the size of Leeds are unable to field two specialist half backs something is fundamentally wrong with the squad make up and the progress of junior development.

I agree. When we had Ablett at HB last weekend. It's exactly what I said - how has it come to this?

It's serious neglect.

It is, and its down to continuing to back the likes of Moon, Sutcliffe and Lilley for too long. Moon has played oodles of games at 6 and delivered zilch in terms of playmaking. Sutcliffe got found wanting in 2016 but has continued to be seen as some kind of backup, and Lilley has also played 40+ games.

We got away with Moon at HB in 17. The club should have signed two HBs then - not just Myler.

Pointless going on about our recruitment. It can drive you mad when you think how little quality we've added to the side

Spot on, the squad has become weaker season by season. To be honest we are a shambles at the moment. A mixture of players who are not good enough, players who are retiring or should be. Plus players who are leaving the club, not forgetting players who seem to be forever injured. Looking on the bright side we will have 2 magnificent stands.

One of the common threads with the disintegration of so-called 'Champion' teams here in Oz (both AFL and NRL) is keeping players on too long and overvaluing bit-part players who could have been replaced by players of similar ability without making any difference to the team. In the end you have a team with a hugely unbalanced salary cap due to back-ending deals or players on long-term deals who are no longer up to the standards their wages demand. All of a sudden you're wondering how on earth the team can be so bad and yet be paying the same in total as other teams who leapfrog past.

To be fair part of the problem is the salary cap itself. But part of it is just taking your eye off the ball. We as a club gave up on serious youth development, and yet if that was all we'd kept investing in we wouldn't be in the state we are now as we'd doubtless have some far better players in their early 20s than we do now.

What would be realistic regarding academy products?

One player every year who is first team quality? One every two years?

I'd say we should be able to produce 1 or 2 squad quality players every year, perhaps one of them is starting first team quality after 3 years in the environment. If we are producing more than 1 top quality player every 3 or 4 years then we are doing really well.

Of course part of the benefit you get in bringing in a lot of younger players at the same time is they've played together so long there is an understanding between them. This is what we got when we introduced the golden generation. You need the players and the timing for that to work, and that's very difficult to achieve.

At the risk of stating the blindingly obvious. I would assume the club has assessed the situations/ incidents in which Stevie is being injured. Eg is he first man in the tackle, is Stevie’s position going into the tackle wrong. Quite obviously he can’t carry on being repeatedly concussed.