There are only five academy players in there, but only two of the 13 who started against Fev (the reserve wings Tindall and Broadbent) are in the squad.

If Hull could give us a game when they had only 2 SL players in the squad then I'd say Leeds look quite a bit stronger.

How close are some of these players to breaking into the starting 17?

Well Walker, Sutcliffe, Martin, Mellor and Thompson are all established and experienced players, though perhaps only two will start the season in Leeds' first-choice 17.

Then six of the remainder are likely to be loanees/DR for Bradord and Fev this year, the other nine would be a long way away from the first team and are more likely to play in Leeds' reserve team or academy this year.

BULLS 12 - 30 RHINOS

Bulls Tries: Gill, R. Evans
Goals: Patton 2/2

Kear
Dawson-Jones
R. Evans
Gill
Foggin-Johnston
Jowitt
Patton
Walker
Flanagan
Crossley
Murphy
Scott
Baldwinson

Scurr
Burton
Ho
Wallace
Myers
Arundel
Camden
Forshaw
Nichol
Mail

So for those that were there. What went right and what went wrong?

Second half an absolute shambles.

No where near acceptable

How many subs were made at half time?
Questions over our fitness levels maybe? Wouldn't be the first time.

Also fighting in a friendly a week before our season starts is about as dumb as it gets.

Well that turned out pretty much how I expected. Not a bad first half. Goy well beaten in the second half especially when we started bringing on our kids and fringe players. Hopefully no injuries.

I felt that defensively we were brilliant in the first half. Leeds had 15/20 mins camped on our line and our defence stood strong. The only chances we made were both converted into tries which was positive. In the second half we really struggled to get going and the constant changing of the team through substitutions made for a disjointed and inconsistent second half performance.

It was clear that during the second half that defensive effort had sapped a lot of our energy levels. Leeds came out the better team in the second half and their fitness levels saw them pull away comfortably. A good test for the squad as we enter the 2022 season.

They scored 24 points before we brought all the kids on.

Utter dross of a second half after an encouraging 1st 40

Great defence in the first half but as been said leeds youngsters too quick for us in second half. Gill and Patton very good again and strong performances at prop from walker and Crossley. Any of the 3 loanees from Leeds could walk into our starting 18 from todays showing. A bit disappointed with Baldwinsons efforts for a big man.

Baldwinson is very much more of a Kirk type of player I’d say not really a player you have to debt the line just more a general hard worker

Total control in the first half. Flanagan got MoM for us and was the difference. I think he dominated and “old manned” their hooker in that first half but overall our mindset in defence was excellent. He then went off ( the first change we made in the spine of the team) and we lost ruck control and their hooker got into the game.
When he got back on, it was 12:12 and he stopped the rot for a little while. Then we started ringing the changes and the scoreboard ran away from us.
I wasn’t as impressed with the 3 Leeds players as they obviously are with themselves…
Mustapha is similar to what we have with Scurr, the hooker struggled to outplay Flanagan, I can’t remember who the third one was

Jarrod O’Connor, Muizz Mustapha and Corey Johnson will all join the Bulls on loan at the start of the 2022 season. Mustapha seems like a workhouse who put in some serious minutes today. He wasn’t shy in coming forward when the punches started to fly as well.

Will be interesting to see how they go this year.

I thought all the Leeds loanees looked pretty good TBH.

I thought we played really well In the first half, very impressed with Gill. The second half they must have had a doing at half time and stepped it up another gear as we struggled with the speed of the game. The thing is for me hopefully we can kick on and have a good season.Roll on Dewsbury!

I see Newcastle were defeated by an equally young Wigan side by a similar score. Maybe we underestimate the gap between Champ clubs and SL youngsters?

It looks to me that if you have a decent academy and you add four or five first teamers to a 17 then you'll have the beating of most championship teams.

Which is why they are keen to bring in 3 Leeds lads on loan, pay v little and hope like hell Leeds don’t suffer injuries and recall them. If Leeds have a relatively injury free season we get 3 decent players costing v little, if they get recalled it’s not cost us financially

O'Connor, Johnson and Mustapha would certainly get in our current 17, I do have some reservations about loans and dual reg if you upset lads who are our permanent signings but it's up to all players to train well enough to get in the side.

Resilient defence in the first half, poor in the second. Gill looks like a good signing.

Appreciate that there have been some improvements to Odsal as part of the stock cars, but overall I don’t think it’s ever been in a worse state. The stands are filthy, the pitch is terrible, the corners are embarrassing and the track being half dug up makes everything look even more amateur.

Speaking of amateur, the weird artificial crowd noise through the speakers needs to go. Was never a fan of playing “We will rock you” when we forced a GLDO but we now seem to play it when we concede a GLDO and at random intervals too. Appreciate the atmosphere is worse than a funeral but the only way we’ll generate any type of atmosphere is by having a good season on the pitch.

Great crowd, would be great if we could get that in a league game but I think we’ll average 2-3k.

Yes it's looks terrible. The pitch is a joke not just the surface but the corners and the lines. There's picture doing the rounds of the dead ball line at the south bank stand end and it's not even straight - never mind the artificial grass corner things.

It doesn't look safe to me.

I think the pitch is just heavy after having 3 consecutive games and it being winter. It was very wet for the Batley game and that made a mess of it.

I agree about the corners, the holes in the track and the dirt. One particularly amateurish thing is the single row of wooden pallets that bridges the tunnel and the pitch. It's covered in mud and looks incredibly shabby. We must be able to do better than that?

I forgot about the "crowd noise" on the PA. Embarrassing.

Watching the Rhys Evans try on Twitter, the pitch looks even worse close up.

I would question whether there has been any maintenance since the end of the season. The run of friendlies and weather won’t have helped though.

Agree regarding the “bridge” to the dressing rooms. Looks like Astro on pallets….. not sure that will stand up to a season of 16 stone blokes walking over it.

Odsal will always have a place in my heart and I’ve argued for years that we should stay. I know there isn’t an alternative anyway, but the whole place is indicative of the fact that we’re not going to get back into SL at any point in the next decade. If we were somehow to have an exceptional season and got promoted (appreciate it would be a miracle) how embarrassing would it be to see that as a “top flight” stadium regularly on Sky Sports?

Odsal has hardly changed at all since the mid 80s. In fact it's worse in some respects. I was reading through some old programme articles from back then and they were saying how unsuitable the ground was for top flight rugby back then - 40 years ago! It's an indictment of the various club owners, the RFL and the city council that the place is in the state it is.