Sinfield jnr should have had a year on loan in the championship. Would do him wonders

I'm sure a championship club would be delighted to have him for a year, but they'd want him for all of it. No recall if Croft or Frawley got injured. We just don't have the depth at half to do that. Catch 22.

Agree , we desperately need a goal kicker and an open field kicker next season, so it’s there for young Sinfield to put pressure on Frawley.

As I watched the game at KR one other thought went through my mind , given we are losing one of the best if not the best goal kicker , do we go for Sneyd for a year or 2 .

He ‘s played with Croft and Ackers, he’s the other top goal kicker in SL and his open field kicking is way better than what we have now.

Frawley tries hard and is a good defender but he plays exactly the same game every week, once you work out not to fall for the dummy, it’s a mix of drop offs and poor kicks.

Maybe we are better just hoping Jack can come through over next 2 years.

I hope you are right about the 3 who might leave.

I don't have an issue with any one person at the club - any rational person can see the youth development at Leeds isn't producing the quantity or quality of youngsters it should. You cannot defend the indefensible. Leeds haven't produced a half back for nearly 20 years - you applaud that? Compare what has come out of Saints and Wigan in the last 10 years to what has come out of Leeds - its embarrassing to compare. I am not the only one on here suggesting this isn't working - you need to get your head out of the sand and see things for what they are.

If Leeds had more homegrown talent of the appropriate quality we would not need 8/9 very average overseas players. Again compare the quality of overseas at Wigan & Saints to Leeds and ask yourself why this is.

If those 3 leave, then that would be Fusitua, Martin, Donaldson, Roberts, Johnson, Hudson, Sangare, Goudemand, Momirovski. A huge amount of cap space and 9 players. Incoming so far is only Hall, so barely moves the dial.

I don't believe for a single second that we are close to the cap limit including all the workarounds, there's plenty of space left to improve the team. If we were only to bring 3 more players in, they should be first class quality and even then it would mean promoting 5 more from the youth set up. The numbers don't add up at a basic level for us not to bring in more players, question is will they be the right quality because the Board will the spend?

Oh and don't forget Myler and Olpherts who left very late in the day last year...

Arthur said in his post match press conference that this week would be review, followed by a week of pre-season before they break. My reading of that is that this is the week where some frank discussions with contracted staff (including coaches) might occur.

Oh for a Phil Ford now old Teflon hands.
I'd even settle for an Eddie Rombo.

Me and the missus are jacking after many consecutive years as season ticket holders. I was going to Jack after the 2022 season, the total lack of integrity within the governing body and the judiciary made me so angry I swore I’d never go to another game of Rugby League. I’ve renewed on the last day of early bird for the last two seasons, but I really do regret renewing for 2024. I’ve not enjoyed it one bit. It’s not the crap team, it’s how crap the game itself has become. Everybody’s different, and some people happily put up with whatever is being offered to them, I’m not one of them. Good luck to those who pay their money and continue to subsidise what I consider a pale comparison of the sport I used to love, but they ain’t getting any more of my dollar.

I suggest you go watch your local amateur team, they will need the support and money from the food and drink, and you’ll probably enjoy it more.

My local amateur team that I followed for many years no longer exists. It was Queens RLFC. They were one of the teams that stuck to Winter rugby while the RFL were offering financial inducements to all the other teams to move to summer rugby alongside the professional game. They were BARLA cup holders and a great club in their day. The RFL effectively destroyed them and other winter based teams, and the move to summer rugby for the other clubs has been an absolute disaster. I started watching East Leeds in the summer league but they couldn’t even raise a team some weeks. The RFL has well and truly wrecked the amateur game in Leeds. Some smaller clubs may have appeared but the giants of Leeds amateur rugby are all struggling, East Leeds and Milford were in the bottom tier last season, and Stanningley hovering near the bottom of tier two. East Leeds got promoted and may have become a bit more stable again so I may go and watch them next season.

Plus the fact he usually only plays first team when we are at the bare bones , so usually we are more over run than normal which makes it harder for him . The kid is talented without doubt but i fear he will move on and prove it elsewhere .

Correct , every year for the last eight years we have been told we have signed the best bunch of junior talent since the Golden generation , yet very little appears in the senior side . If that is not proof of poor coaching at youth level then what is it .

Wouldn't be surprised if Sinfield Jr turns out to be the next Jordan Lilley. No idea how they all get on at training but limited game time even when other options are questionable makes you wonder. Hopefully he proves me wrong but if he didn't have the Sinfield surname would people think he was as good?

Let's hope that you are right, and the 'Leeds are close to the cap' messages coming from the club are simply a means to avoid being taken to the cleaners by player agents etc. The Rhyse Martin exit would give credence to this, but you have to wonder if it really was only about money, and other personal issues such as a different challenge, prospect of silverware and length of contract offered also played a part.

I suspect there is transfer money available if the right player is identified, but that won't help us bring in NRL players, and that is where the cap and marquee slots need to be used a lot more effectively.

We'd be making progress of sorts if that did happen. Far too few of our prospects push on in a meaningful way, either with us or elsewhere.

Sinfield will have to be really good at passing, kicking and leading the team around to make up for his lack of speed and size. Having said that, we've all seen plenty of half backs who star as juniors because they're quick who fail to kick on because that's all they've got.

It seems like the juniors coming through are significantly better as a group than for a long time, at least in the backs. But our development has been really poor for years. Most of the home grown regulars came through years ago - Handley, Holroyd, Newman, Oledzki, Smith all debuted 2018 or earlier. Of the current side the only regular to come through after that is O'Connor.

If you don't enjoy it any more then stopping going makes sense. Feeling the need to tell the world about it in this way on here may make some question your motives.

But the world moves on. For me my favourite aspect of the club's great years were lingering memories of the struggles before - such as 86 and 96. It made the difficult times worth it.

Agree with that. We were in the wilderness for a long time from the late 70's ( with a brief 2 year blip) up until 2004. I know we had some decent times during that period, but by and large we got stuffed when it mattered. When Danny took Senior's pass to go over for the winner at Old Trafford it was a moment of deliverance. I hope KR/Wire/Salford/Leigh fans get to have that experience in the coming weeks. I know not everybody has been following the club for the same portion of time, but if you started supporting Leeds from mid noughties on I would humbly submit that your sense of perspective and entitlement is inevitably skewed. I appreciate people have different and very valid reasons for packing it in, but I'll continue to wait for the next moment of deliverance. I don't think it will be 30 odd years this time.

I started watching in 1981, and was at Wigan when we won the JPT in 1984. The next win was the Yorkshire Cup 1988. After that more than a decade to the Challenge Cup 1999. It took 18 years to win a major trophy, so I'm pretty tolerant of barren spells.

But I have more sense now of how to build a decent team, and it really frustrates me to see how badly the team has been run since the end of the Goldens. Watching the team fall apart has been like watching a slow motion car wreck, with warning signs even before 2015.

On the plus side it feels that Blease is laser focused on getting us back to the top, and I'm confident Arthur will leave the club in a better state than when he arrived. The downside is it feels like we're 2-3 years away from really competing and Arthur is unlikely to be here to steer us there. I can live with that but I do understand if some have reached the end of their tether for now. Hopefully green shoots of long term recovery and they'll be back.

Yep. I was there at the JP, last hurrah for the likes of Holmes, Dick and co. I'm probably more optimistic than you, in that I believe we've been fighting with the equivalent of two broken hands (due to our criminal lack of props) for the most part of the decade. I believe Arthur and Blease will sort that this year, and as result the rest of the team will improve exponentially. Not saying we'll be champions but we can stop being also rans in 25. If Salford and Leigh can compete with their lack of infrastructure there is no reason to think that we can't rise again very quickly.

This year has been extremely frustrating, I do believe Blease and Arthur will fix some of the issues in the off season.

Don't know if this is a reflection of the quality of the league but there are 3 games that stick out for me, Huddersfield at home, Hull KR at home and Salford away, I still believe that we 'should' have won those with just a bit more composure. That would have had us finishing 4th, and in fact any other year finishing on 28 points as we have would have got us in the playoffs.

As I say that might be a reflection of the quality of the league.

What I would like to see next season is starting off well, getting some decent wins early on can pay dividends later on in the year, I'm usually one for saying its a long season and your start doesn't reflect your finish, but I'm ditching that philosophy next year, we need to start with some momentum so we aren't chasing points at the back end and it will also get the fans back on board.

I'm still not over Huddersfield at home. From that point on I'd lost faith in Smith. The thumping from an understrength Wire shortly after confirmed it. Agree with your sentiments re KR and Salford, but you also have to factor in our two daylight robberies against London.

Agree with this. The Huddersfield at home game defeat was really inexplicable, we (twice?) built leads that should have been enough to grind out a win.

The London games were poor too, for far too long Leeds seem to more often than not be brought down to the level of the opposition. It seems like an attitudinal thing but for professional sportsmen we let this happen far too often. We've seen it happen under Arthur and Smith, but this lack of ruthlessness during the regular season arguably goes back to Brian Mac's days or even earlier. Is it a culture thing, or just chronic mis-investment in playing staff?

And he came from Widnes!!

We used to delight in the fact that the team peaked for the latter part of the season and didn't always perform during the regular season.
Now that is being described as a problem.