I think what we've learnt from the first 4 games is this new guy we've got at Stand Off isn't as good at goal kicking as that fella who played Loose Forward last season!

He seems to have changed his kicking style but he will be at the top again come the end of season. He is a class act no matter where he plays.

All the things that have cost us points so far are easily fixable:

Missed tackles
Tries scored from dummy half
Interception passes thrown

Nowt too serious there that we can't sort.

Another positive is the injured players that will be drip-fed back into the playing 17.

In patches perhaps but without much consistency at the present time. A few late tries when games have been (and one when it should have been) lost have presumably helped that perception. It's also a little early to pay too much attention to such tables where teams could move up or down several positions each week. Let's see how they look around week 13 when everyone has just about played everyone else.



Coach McDermott has a record of producing disciplined teams, unfortunately he also has a record of producing losing teams. Let's just hope the two aren't connected.

Personally I enjoyed Graham Murray's approach of going out to put the opposition off their game and yes occasionally that might involve conceding the odd penalty along the way but it usually paid dividends in the end.

Omething that I noticed at the harlequins game was how deep our half backs were playing, but then the centre wing combo standing quite flat when the ball got to them, I didn't think it worked particulary well.

On the above note regarding tables I don't know why they bother publishing them from the start of the season. Alot of the errors that we are producing can be improved, but we shall see. I thought all the players were saying how in the pre season they were doing alot more work with the ball? It hasn't looked lime it early doors

On the surface they sound quite readily fixable as you suggest. But when you scratch a little deeper it is quite visible that the rot has set in. Last season we made do with a poor defence, we shipped points in and this problem never improved and was never tackled (pardon the pun). Old habits die hard. When Mac came in and talked about the 'brand' I cringed. Leeds are cutting corners in the basics, and is (and was) our biggest shortfall, so something so obvious should have been Priority Number 1. Leeds have enough natural talent to score beautiful try's we all know that, that can be quantified in the amount of long range try's we score. Look after the defence and the rest will fall into place. It's nothing complicated, it's only rugby league.

From the SL website, the stats for Leeds aren't too bad, especially on attack.

We have the most tries, off-loads, clean breaks, drop goals (!), and second most metres made.

OTOH, we have missed the most tackles and made the third most errors, with the second fewest marker tackles.

Can you please explain how that team stat works?

(Hauraki has missed 11 on his own, with the next worst being Leuluai and Sinfield each with 9 to their credit.)

There must be somebody out there who knows.

Agreed.
Im jealous

Isn't it just missed tackles that can't be attributed to a single player?! No proof to this I'm just a guessing! You know, like if a player is running at 3 or 4 of us and slips through. Would the Opta man mark down all 4 players and allocate them a missed tackle each? Or would that not just go down as a "Team Missed Tackle"??

This seems the safest explanation.

We are doing some great looking off-loads..... admittedly they are all pretty much in to the arms of the opposition, but at least we are off-loading a bit.

Who knows but I doubt that explanation would be it.

The team total displayed (on that site) equates exactly to the sum total of all the individual players who have played in said season for that team - try it for yourself - pick a category - find all the Leeds players (now would be a good time only 20 used so far) - total them. (It acts as a convenient cross check when I do the weekly report) Trust me it works, all that is except for 'Try Assists' which are not recorded in the Team section for some unknown reason and the missed tackles which bear no resemblance to the accumulated totals of the individual players.

As these tables appear database driven I'm assuming there is some formula at work but have no idea what it could be.

I'll have a gander. It's not like I've got a business to run or anything.

Hey no-one ever pretended being this anal was easy.

If that's not a topic killer, it should be!

It won't be, he never mentioned a glass coffee table.

That thread was awesome. Got some sheer quality sig material out of it too

A great positive is that im getting up to Headingley for my first game of the season!!

Another positive i've just thought of -

My Grandma's birthday next week, i might bring some cake to the Saints game!

Another positive - Cross isn't playing.

Are you paying?

I'm not, media pass innit.

A certain poster I just quoted has requested to use my mates U15 season ticket....

Old people cake...??? Count me in.