The problem is, as you said yourself, the players we have are not Brad Arthur style players. We don’t have a dominant pack.

No amouht of pre-season work is going to make a pack containing Goudemand, Bentley, O’Connor, Sangare etc a fearsome one. We need to smell the roses at Leeds: our players aren’t as good as we think they are or they think they are. 7th is about right this year; i.e there are 6 better teams than us in the comp. We need both better coaching and better players to coach, otherwise we will be round and round the washing machine of mediocrity interminably.

A club the size and wealth shouldn't need to be in a long term project 9 years after the demise of the core of the golden generation - how much patience and a level of understanding does that need.

It didn't happen at Wigan and it wont take Saints that long to rebuild - why has it taken so long and it will be potentially another 3 years!!

I agree im not sticking up for the club, quite the opposite

We will add to the squad though

I think patience is needed,sadly after 9 years of (often predictable) bad choices in recruitment of players and coaches the fans have little of that left.

BA if he stays has the qualities we need and I'm sure will want to fix the pack as soon as contract allows. However that still takes time for those on contract and we are stick with Goudemand, Sangare and questions over the value of Holroyd and Bentley + questions on Gannon and concussion issues.

I don't think the squad is as bad as it looks but the lack of go forward frustrates us and we start to panic and push the silly plays / try too hard.Then having no leaders means we domt settle or recover into hard work but go harder on miracle plays.

We need BA or a similar level coach. We need at least one prop and one back row of V high quality. Preferably two.
We also need to find a way to get some leadership / brains in.

Honestly, I think even with an amazing coach and above signings the best we can hope for is making the play offs.
Won't be until the 26" season that the new guy will have the cap freedom and contracts ending to have "his" team his way.

The problem is without knowing who the coach is going to be how do you attract the quality of player you need to move forward. Leeds isn't the draw it used to be - do we do what we have done for several years over pay for very average players?

When is the academy going to produce the quality of youngsters the like of Wigan and Saints have been producing for many years - in yesterday's game only 5 players came through the academy and only one of them Edgell has come through in the last 5 years that is an appalling reflection of the junior set up at Leeds

Yup, the problems with the academy has Bern well documented but apparently improving. Edgell and McCormack seem promising. TNW hasn't really had chance, similar for Ruan

I think we are at the point now where we can say how much of the poor results has been down to poor players, and how much to poor coaching. It’s looking like it’s more about poor players. They will continue to be better under Brad Arthur, and even better still with a pre-season under Arthur or a similarly better coach. But though this group of players could sneak into a play off position in 2025, if we want to start on the path of winning things we need quite a few changes in our roster. For me, that would focus on props.
Hopefully with Blease in place and a new coach we will start to make better recruitment decisions.

That is a fair point when Donaldson is making in to your first 17 something is clearly not working

A game we should have won, but lost for 3 reasons
Mistakes
Penalties
Fitness
We are a painfully unfit team. Out on their feet in the second half.
This is because they are playing a different game in defence in the first half, but they're not conditioned enough to keep it up.
I think this then leads to errors and giving away penalties.
That can be fixed in time, but still too many players simply not good enough for top 6.

Pack is miles off in terms of quality.
Sangare just hasn't worked out. Really disappointed with him.
Oledski and McDonnell would be the only ones I'd keep tbh.

And I really think it's time to move Newman on.
His pace has clearly gone and his defence is terrible.
The only thing he really offers now is trying to get a penalty every time he gets tackled.

I know we're all still slightly hopeful we can make the play offs, but tbh we're not a top 6 side.
We'll probably finish 8th looking at the remaining games.

When you say move Newman on?

I was initially concerned that Leeds were after Paul Rowley but imo he needs to have players who thrive on togetherness which the Rhino's don't seem to have right now. Rowleyball also requires fitness and Many Leeds players are certainly not at the 100% level.

Not offer him a new contract.
And tell him he is free to talk to other clubs.

Smith suspended for the Wigan game.
Maybe O`Connor to LF or Bentley?

That game was the last straw for me. Pathetic crowd, pathetic officials, and pathetic input from the the commentary team. I’m struggling to watch the game at the moment, and like Ploinerrhino I’ll be bailing out of a season ticket next year. The most worrying thing for me is the officiating. We have officials making decisions based on other things than what they actually see with their own eyes. Call it cheating, call it what you want. How Lafai didn’t get sent off is unbelievable. Direct, forceful contact to the head jolting a players head back and leaving him poleaxed. Was he not sent off because he was a home player, was he not sent off because there were only 4 minutes gone, or was he not sent off because he’s not called Zane Tetevano ? For Barrie McDermott to suggest it was Miller’s own fault for putting his head down shows what an absolute buffoon McDermott has become. Is he saying stupid, ridiculous things to create an edgy, controversial t.v personality ? What he is in fact doing is projecting himself as a slack, oafish ex hard man that is trying to be the bloke down the pub. He followed that up with his “Momorovski is having a terrific first season with the Rhinos”. At that stage I thought the men in white coats with sedatives would soon be there to take him away. Absolute numbskull. As for Handley’s 3 yards backwards “knock on”….I think we’re all speechless on that one. The standard of officiating is the worst I’ve ever seen, and that’s the main reason why I won’t be renewing. Too many games decided on officials clearly ignoring transgressions and choosing which players/incidents they deem fit to penalise. The whole sport is a mess, they’ve killed off the amateur game and are well on the way to killing the professional game.

In Warringtons case , they actually had some good players and signed a couple more plus there young players are good and they have loads of pace in the backs .

We have very few good players and our youngsters are not as good

A great first 20 minutes, but this team tends to be gassed far too early playing Arthurball, unfortunately.

When we were on, we scored some great tries - some of the best we've seen of Frawley, Miller, Croft, and yes, the Momster. Momirovski showed us what kind of player he can be if we stick with him - classic centre play a la Brad Godden. Nice contrast with Newman's more direct approach if he ever gets back into form. And we can forgive Momster for the pass into touch towards the end - plenty more to complain about from Lisone, Martin and Bentley - just awful.

Not sure Sangare went too well at the start. Our pack really is dire.

Its not really "Arthurball" though is it? Its just rugby league the way it is supposed to be played. There are signs some of our players will be fine playing normal rugby, but others have been shown up for just being really poor players. I include errors and penalty counts in that as they are absolute momentum killers, and we have too many players who seem unable to go through a game without losing ball in contact, throwing ridiculous offloads or terrible passes, or give away the stupidest of penalties. Oddly enough one of our worst offenders in that regard, Miller, has at least shown he can control himself.

It's going to take a while to see what players are actually up to playing RL how it should be played after so long playing to Smith who I think was trying to be some kind of RL revolutionary but his ethos didn't stand up on the field.

I think the success he had straight off the bat in 2022 convinced him he'd found a new way to play the game - play rope-a-dope in defence and counter attack from anywhere on the field. It worked that year because we needed to fix our awful defence and was probably the only way that side had a chance to win games. As confidence built we took a lot of teams by surprise, and lets be honest it really did work that year.

Again just my opinion but I think he believed the problem last season were the likes of Austin and Sezer, and not the way we were trying to play. So the plan was a proper clearout for this year, and the problems that probably caused among the squad last season were just something that had to be lived with to make the changes he wanted.

I reckon he knew early this year he'd got things badly wrong but he'd built a squad to play that way and knew they couldn't try to play 'normal' rugby very well. I think that's why he kept on about the ruck needing to be cleaned up - he's right of course that it does need to be, but the helter skelter rugby will only generally work off quick PTBs. Without that its just hail Mary high risk plays and once opponents worked out how to play us - which really means playing basic RL themselves without panicking - we were cooked.

I quite like the guy and he seems pretty smart. To paraphrase though it seems he's not as clever as he thinks he is....

Spot on

Well said.
I think that's a pretty accurate summary of Smith's period as coach.

Agree with most of that.
However, Amateur game seems to be thriving in and around where I work in Kippax. I’m def switching more to that these days. Far more enjoyable!

Glad you have something decent to watch in Kippesh, enjoy your rugby. Sad to say the amateur game in Leeds has been absolutely decimated. The RFL’s drive to run the amateur game alongside Superleague in summer has been an absolute disaster. Their discriminatory attitude to clubs that wanted to stay winter based effectively killed them off, and despite throwing incentives at clubs to move to the summer Conference League the initial novelty has worn off and the lack of players and lack of quality has seen once great clubs languishing in the doldrums. There are only 4 divisions in their flagship league, and three of the biggest amateur clubs from Leeds historically are languishing in the lowest division, East Leeds, Milford and Drighlington. Another one is near the foot of tier 2 (Stanningley), and the only representation at the top level from Leeds is Hunslet Club Parkside. The game is on its backside in Leeds at the top amateur level and it’s been heading that way for years. Ask any of the older generation about the strength of Leeds amateur teams in the past and they will tell you that all the clubs named above are a shadow of their former selfs. They’ll speak of BARLA internationals from teams like Queens, Bisons, Yew Tree and Brassmoulders, now defunct. Like I said at the start, enjoy your amateur rugby mate. I used to, but the halcyon days are long gone in Leeds and I fear never to return.

That’s tragically sad. I grew up in Hudds, some richly historical amateur clubs there too. Wonder how that’s going?