Nigel Hawkins on twitter is very special.

Not the sharpest tool in the box that one. But a large tool nonetheless

Ahh the guy who upon hearing Ward was declared fit to play urged the Cas players to "smash that c**t" and that Ward was "bang average"

He's a fu****g tit that bloke...The end

Let's head back a prior 9 years from that game to the 10th October 2003 - the last tackle of the 2003 season for Leeds versus Wigan at Headingley. Sinfield made a break on the back of a Senior/Cummings break leaving Wigan flocking back in numbers but many offside. Rob Burrow at the dummy half throws the ball to Dunneman and via a pair or two hands later Mathers is tackled on the blind side giving victory to Wigan and them a path to the Grand Final.

If you watch the two instances back, there are many similarities and I strongly believe that Rob will have watched that back and thought if the opportunity arises itself, I will run at an offside defender and get a penalty to put us ahead.

The gift of experience.

Make no mistake about it, that was a poor Leeds team but we hardly made a dent in them.

For whatever reason, that was as bad as I've seen in a long, long time. Spent all night going sideways, only Cookie ran straight. No support play, kicking game as bad as it gets.

To say I'm disappointed is an understatement. Let ourselves down, big-time.

Good god they've had a purple patch and ended up having delusions of grandeur

While it wasn't a classic game it was by no means the worse GF of all time.
The fact Cas didn't turn up and McGuire was sublime made it a reasonable GF.

To be fair it was a hell of a purple patch, almost (key word) a season long in fact. But they will have learnt from it and [size=150If [/sizethey can fill the gap left by the coke kid, they'll be there or there abouts next season.

It's going to be really tough to get a quality starting FB at this point of the year as they'll all be signed up. They still don't have the financial power to sign top established players and most likely why they couldn't pull off the Walmsley deal and are getting in guys like Garry Lol and Aston now being rumoured.

Whilst most don't rate him there I think we'll see Eden at FB next year, after all that looked like their original plan before Hardaker became available and they'll play Lo on the wing instead of loaning him back to Sheffield.

Totally agree with you on the difficulty Cas will have finding a quality FB at this point in time. I have edited my post accordingly

well I watched it again last night and the looks on the faces of the Castleford players when they were making mistakes as if they were going to burst into tears. They seemed very nervous

Having a look through the other SL teams then they might be a chance of getting O'Brien or Evalds from Salford with all the question marks around the club now Koukash has left. Other than that can't see much. Seen a few people saying Cas should go for Mamo from Hudds and whilst he's be a great fit for them, Hudds won't have any interest in selling him.

Had a good read through that independent Cas forum...WOW.
I'm very grateful to them for letting Leeds have their 15 minutes of fame, and for our one win in eight. Leeds are the crappest side to ever win the Grand Final, and if that perfectly good Eden try had been given, there's no doubt whatsoever, Cas would have rolled on and won the game comfortably. Special bunch that lot. P.S apologies to the thousands of Tiggers world wide who jetted in to watch James Child hand Leeds another title

I bet Peter Smith (yep) wishes he'd leave it out. Nearly everything he tweets Mr Hawkins always replies with bitterness and hatred towards us. He's declaring it would be another 66-10 job if we played Melbourne and can't see past his tiger glasses. I don't normally bother when people slag us off but this numpty is beyond belief! Just one thing to say Barry which will hurt you so much as you clearly are so bitter whilst most of your fans are over it but WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS my friend

Watched it back again today and got to say, stevie ward was an absolute machine, brilliant performance.

There was no one more smug or cocky throughout the season than luke gale,really developed a dislike for him this year.

watching the game again last night I noticed the look on the faces of the Cas fans when they realized they were on a loser , we've seen that look a few times in the last ten years haven't we ? 15 minutes of fame

He has come across that way however I’m sure there’s players in all teams that were winning the league that can seem like that. I’m sure opposition fans may have said similar about McGuire or other Leeds players.

What worries me is how rattled Gale was. You could see he was visibly rattled/shaken etc however you want to phrase it. That doesn’t bode well for when he’s playing for England. Against Australia there will be periods of the game where we are under severe pressure and he didn’t seem to react well to it in the Grand Final.

Got to admire not just his performance, but his courage and determination to play just a week after that horrendous dislocation. Mentally and physically tough, and a very good player - future Leeds and England captain?

Worst grand final of all time imo was saints v Wigan in 2014. Saints were poor and gifted the vert early flower send off yet still had to labour hard for victory in an error fest.

Like two punch drunk hobo's fighting over a half eaten kebab.

Bar Flowers absolute brain explosion who remembers anything else about that game bar Saints falling over the line to victory?

Utterly shambolic game.

I think you might find that "rattled" was down to not wanting to be tackled, rather than anything else, due to the infection to his surgery. In real terms, he shouldn't have been playing, but like that was going to happen.

It was a poor game, Cas were very poor. It probably was the worst GF of all time.

However, leeds won comfortably, they won at a canter and looked like if necessary they could step up a few gears. The lads were virtually perfect defensively and were good attacking wise and managed the game wonderfully.

Hmmm not so sure on that. He seemed very easy to rile both with his own teammates and at Leeds. And didn’t seem that way early on. It was only when Leeds went a couple of scores ahead that this appeared.

If gale tries to pull that post try cat walk strut crap in aus he'll get eaten alive, not that he'll score mind.