I frankly can't be bothered reading much of the gubbins the fekktards will have predictably been posting. Did anyone spill their vitriol after the 17 was named but before KO? I bet not.

Had we named pretty much a full strength team, which is what most appear to have wanted now in hindsight.....then gone onto lose the CC Final next week do we believe the posters on here would've said......

A - oh well at least we helped our league positioning by making sure of the 2 points vs London......league placing is more important than the cup we haven't won in 15 years.

B - f**king hell McDermott. Possibly the last chance this golden generation had at winning the CC and he ruined it by playing them in a meaningless league game vs London when everybody knows league placings are irrelevant. He should've rested like Powell did with his Cas starters.

I think we know the answer is almost certainly B.

Whatever position we miss out on come season end I'll be more disappointed about not picking up the win at Saints when they were injury hit rather than losing at London. We had good reasons for resting players vs London......vs Saints we just f**ked up when we had a golden chance.

For all the turmoil, we've played 28 game in total this year. We've only been outscored in tries in TWO games. 2 out of 28 games has the opposition crossed the tryline more than we have. 7 defeats and 5 of those we've scored the same amount of tries but got less kicks.....Sinfield missed 3 of those defeats.

Not sure how anyone can dismiss this pish poor result.
To say it is only 2 points and Cas also lost is in my opinion a bit arrogant.
We were playing London FFS .We should have beaten them despite resting or whatever you want to call it several players.
We should have beaten Bradford too.
Ok win next week and this result doesn't matter.
But win both games against two relegated sides and we would most likely have won at least one trophy and be in pole position for the Playoffs.
In my book we go to win every game.
Biggest mistake was to leave out Robbie Ward or let Burrow play today.
I certainly don't buy into this bolloc$s of it's only two points. Bird in the hand should always be the choice of a good team.

We should've beaten London today even with the team we put out. Especially when we had a 22 point lead with 30 mins left.....no team should let that lead slip against any opposition.

McDermott will take some stick for the team he put out, but at the same time it was good enough to race into that lead.....and whilst the coach sets the attitude/focus of the team he also shouldn't have to hold their hands out there. Losing that lead was sloppy by the players. Whilst I agree that R.Ward should've been on the bench instead of Golding, should that one change really be the difference between a win and loss today?

It shows once again what Sinfield gives us as captain. Without checking through the history books have we ever let such a lead slip? Only one that springs to mind is Canterbury Bulldogs in the 2005 WCC and we still managed to win.

Without being there today it's had to tell but did those fringe players think job done and let's try and impress for a Wembley place and forget the basics thus didn't get through those sets in the 30 mins like they should've done? Last week vs Wire even when they were pushing in the 2nd half I personally felt we had the situation well under control at all times.

People can talk about talented players coming through all they want, but the most important thing teams need are leaders. I think even most of us will agree that Sinfield isn't out-and-out near a super talent in terms of individual physical play......but his RL brain is well above others. The last 7 GF's have been shared between Leeds and Wigan, the two teams who IMO have the most/best leaders from the challengers in their teams.

Unfortunatley what has been shown all season is we do not seem to have any talent coming through

Its 2 fingers to the league. Again. How I yearn for the days when coming top of the league actually counted for something. I fully understand the value of next week's game but come the end of Sept no-one will be bothered who won the cup (Leeds or Cas fans aside), and we're making a GF appearance less & less likely with each point thrown away.

Yes of course this was a big disappointment but as has been said the team selected was good enough and had a 30-8 point lead with 20 minutes to go and substitutions should not have effected the result. I have listened to Mac's after match interview and you can tell he was livid with certain players and said they will be held to account.

I didn't go to the game so my comments have to be taken in that context. However we did leak points down our left flank and on viewing the highlights VT Handley looked the rookie centre that he is defensively. Also in the second half Bailey looked defensively soft for a couple of tries.

It will be interesting to see who makes the bench for Wembley. Achurch attacking ability may have won him a place

Som fair points there Printer and from what is being said McDermott is not a happy man with some of the individuals yesterday.
I agree we should have had enough experience to beat a poor London side and some of the more experienced players have once again shown themselves up.
It might also highlight how poor some of the youngsters are this time around.
Like many have said we are bang in trouble when we lose Sinfield and JP.
Really can`t understand why we were tempted to flog Aiton without a decent back up hooker on the park.
Roll on Saturday.

The attitude was all wrong, and you could see it from the stands. Even when we were 36-26 up, i remember saying to my mate that we had lost the game. They were opening us up at will by then, and nobody was talking or taking leadership. I think we will come to regret the 4 dropped points against the relegated teams.

Still waiting for someone to utter a word of praise for London........

Congratulations. I hoped you would win at least one this season, as I actually think the effort the players have put in to a losing cause has been exemplary when I've seen you. I just really hoped it wouldnt be this weekend!!

32 tackles with 1 miss. You're the one who sets great store on stats, when it suits you.

Who are you on about Handley or Bailey mate? Because there is no way Handley only missed one tackle, I counted at least 5.

Bailey. Handley's down as missing 6 and even from the highlights you can see he had a mare. Not sure you could say same about Bailey unless watching with an agenda.

Calm down izzy. Bailey made 32 tackles and 13 carries so obviously put in some decent work. However if you care to read my comment and then view the VT you will see that he looked to have run out of gas as he never even tried to get into a position to make a tackle or even a missed one on two occasions when they scored. As I said my comments were made only on seeing the VT and hearing Mac's comments.

My comment regarding Handley was valid too as although he made 26 tackles he also missed 7 (not 6)

Without seeing the game we have no idea whether it was missed tackles that cost us. I suspect it was lazy play which meant no tackle at all. (see my above bailey comment)

We all have access to the store of stats. It is how you interpret them that counts. Assuming you read them correctly. Handley made 7 missed tackles not 6!

I have watched the highlights. The TJ puts the flag up the second Watkins steps in touch!

I care. I'd take the highest spot possible over the cup any day.

Correct. It was right in front of me. Watkins was clearly in touch and the TJ flagged it straight away.

Seriously? So you'd take third instead of fourth over a win next Saturday?

The point im making is that if we dont rest players against Bradford and London we are top right now and are in pole position for a home game in the first week of the playoffs. As it is, we now are just as likely to finish 6th (yes, I know thats a home game too) as we are 2nd.

And anyway, yes, I don't care much for the Cup as it is. I didn't even watch the last cup final we were in.

Maybe so - but the Cup semi and Final are clearly more important games than fixtures against Bradford and London. You might not care about winning the Cup, but the players and club clearly do. And for what it's worth, I think this is the year they finally will do it too. All worth it then, even if they don't manage a top two finish. It's so tight in the race for the GF this year anyway, I'm not sure finishing position means very much at all.

In any case - resting players was not the reason the game was lost yesterday. It was the inability of the team selected to get the job done when in a winning position.

You genuinely care more about the game yesterday than the final next week?

At least next year resting people at this stage will not be an option as it's a top 4 playoff. The cup needs to go back to May though. It's cheapened the finish to the season even more than usual this time.

And if the final was moved back to May (I agree on this point) teams would still rest players before the final.