Hetherington did not want to ditch McDermott until the end of the season, it was McDermotts choice to leave when he did.

Wasn't it the other way round? I thought McDermott refused to resign and so was sacked?

Like I said, too many believing the hype that all the success was down to Sinfield and wanting him in and GH and McDermott out. Probably believed it himself and that he’d stroll through the Middle 8’s.

That’s not what I heard, I heard that Hetherington told him that he would be replaced at the end of the year but McDermott basically said back me or sack me.

We still might stroll through them if and its a big if, we win the last 4 games

Printer/Christopher why are you arguing with yourself?

The club decided that a change was required if the £40m investment they had made was to be protected. They needed to sell corporate packages and a lot of them >450 in the new North stand alone as well as all the boxes.

Something needed to change - it hasn't worked out as we all would have hoped but it wasn't McDermott's decision - let's face it the general standard of play under his coaching has been dull and desire for corporate clients to pay a premium for 2019 simply wasn't there - something had to be done.

We won’t beat Salford so we’ll have to win the other three. Which we could do but probably make hard work of and Toronto last game with our defence could be dicey.

Yes I agree do something, but something smart not the mess that they did.

Leave McDermott’s exit until end of the season or replace him back then with a proper new coach not this mess of a setup with Kevin “I’m not the coach” Sinfield. Sinfield hasn’t done anything to suggest he’s ready for the roles he’s taken on but people at the club have built this idea that his is because they had to find someone responsible for our success and it couldn’t be McDermott and GH because they’ve spent way too many years criticing and writing them off only to be made to look stupid. Irony now is they been made to look stupid again just in a different way to previously.

Had a little s at that one myself.

Is there any real chance Leeds could contest MPG?

Wins against Widnes (a) Halifax (a) and Toronto (h) would be enough and is doable despite our struggles. Have Salford at home but don’t fancy us to win that.

We haven’t played well at Widnes for god knows how long, and following today’s result the Vikings will be desperate. I don’t see that as an easy win at all.

Everyone’s desperate in the Middle 8’s. I don’t think it’ll be easy either but it is winnable. We lost by 2 today to a team that is much better than Widnes. Denis Betts for all the criticism he got at Widnes always could pull out a result at home and did against us a few times (a few fortunate timings pre & post World Club Challenge matches) the current Widnes team is in even worst shape than Leeds at the moment.

Leeds' game against Toronto is looking VERY tasty

As a rovers fan today’s result & display was great but I do feel for clubs that finished 9th & 10th could still go down but win more games than teams who finished 7th & 8th. But I am enjoying the middle 8s.

I don't really understand the underlined tbh.
If a team finishes outside the Top 8 before the split it's generally because they've lost more games - in this seasons case, 2 fewer wins than those above.
After the split, those in 9th and 10th are playing 4 Champ clubs and the 2 teams below them in SL. While 7th and 8th are playing the top 6 in SL, so it's hardly a like for like comparison.
You'd expect a team finishing say 9th to beat the Champ clubs and at least a couple of the SL Clubs beneath them. If a team that finishes 9th or 10th like you say goes down, they'd have to lose a fair number of games against teams they really should be beating.
Although saying that I would feel for a Club if they were to go down after finishing 9th after 23 rounds of SL and comfortably above 11th and 12th.

THey couldn't get the corporate sponsors to committ with McDermott in charge - they were asking for a big uplift and they had a lot more spaces to fill. They were getting push back everywhere - he had to go it was a commercial not a rugby decision.

I don’t understand it either it was not meant to be underlined just some button I have pushed but don’t know which one. I do like the idea of the million pound game but championship top & super league bottom should go up/down 10/11should play home & away 2/3 six game play off bottom 2 million pound game if they are determined to get 30 games in. Better still 14 team league bottom down top up 13 play 2 game for super league spot.

! up 1 down seems a whole lot simpler, either a straight swap or by a "million pound game".
The big issue for next season, if we change to 1 up 1 down, will be that the promoted side could have a very short lived SL existence as they will be favourites for the drop.

Any evidence of this or is it just another thing you’ve dreamt up in your head and are trying to push as fact?

My take on McDermott leaving was that the club would have been OK with him staying until the end of the year but he forced the issue by refusing to budge, making them pull the pin instantly.

Management at Leeds clearly underestimated just how bad the squad has become, and also overestimated how much of an impact Sinfield might have. Sinfield's record is won 3, drawn 1 and lost 4 with average points against 30 per game, with 2 of the wins coming against M8 Championship teams and the other vs Widnes at home. Bag McDermott all you like (I will because I think he contributed hugely to the fall in standards over the past couple of seasons), but Sinfield's record is terrible.

We've seen virtually no improvement since he replaced McDermott. Defensively we're worse, which is very worrying because a lot of that is about attitude. With the benefit of hindsight we should have gone for someone with more experience and credibility alongside Sinfield, just to get us through this season.

I think we'll squeak through, avoiding the MPG as we should be able to win enough games, but I don't think anyone should be under any illusions as to how awful we currently are.

Any form of Promotion will always have that.

The way it is now we went up last year, finished above 2 other teams and could still be relegated. Leigh were promoted in '16 and didn't finish bottom in '17 and went down. Now that really isn't a fair system.

That’s the way I see it. The rebuild job is so big you need someone with experience to do it. Appointing Sinfield and Lowes is a very high risk strategy since neither of them are proven. While I expect you to stay up it could be very close and it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that you’ll end up in the MPG which is very much a lottery. If you do stay up I’d say you need to bring in an experienced head coach. The Leeds situation reminds me of when McNamara got the Bulls job in 2006. He had to manage a huge transition yet had next to no experience to fall back on. He made plenty of mistakes along the way. Had we gone for someone more experienced our fall from grace might not have been so bad.

I see some people are still blaming the system for their teams predicament. If you're "good enough" to finish 9th, then you should be good enough to avoid the MPG. Teams that go down in this system or any other system only have themselves to blame. It's not about what's fair, everyone knows what they've signed up for.

McDermott is way down the list of people to blame. Gets stick for the current makeup of the squad but he’s not the one writing the cheques and do you really think Ormondroyd, Aston, Yates etc. were top of his wish list. A ridiculous rumour came out this yeah that GH tried to improve the squad but McDernott refused saying he was happy with what he had. You only have to look at those aforementioned signings and what clubs they came from (DR clubs and GH’s favour to his old club) to see that McDermott couldn’t stop GH from making signings if he wanted to.

He lost Sinfield, Peacock, Leuluai, Hardaker from his treble squad with nothing coming in and still won another title. He then lost McGuire and Burrow and we were still going ok this year for the first half of the regular season. With those departures then 5th place after 13 rounds only a point off the playoffs with most of your props missing most of the season was a bloody great effort and the games we did lose were extremely narrow with 3 one pointers.

Things started to turn funnily enough straight after the release of As Good As It Gets which I thought considering the club were involved in its production was a disgrace to have two former players in Sinfield & Burrow criticise the current coach halfway through this season (the latter being part of the club staff). His major crime was he demoted one to the bench (which turned out to be a master stroke and in part because Sinfield wanted to play HB) and the other got dropped for 2 games and he made such a meal of it in the film making out like he was ditched for months and keeping a diary of everything that was said. Given he’s now going on about “internal competition” and having to play well to keep your shirt he’s a hypocrite for sulking because he did start that 2015 playing awful.

Low and behold results and seemingly effort starts going south and those two guys several weeks later are stepping into the breach with Sinfield’s DOR role and Burrow involved with the first team now.

McDermott sacking announced on Monday and Sinfield announced shortly after with loads of GH roles going to him. Anybody who doesn’t think this was in the pipeline for at least several weeks is naive. People say McDernott lost the players, I disagree. The club lost the players. For all the criticism of them they did finish 2nd last year and win the GF. This year they went away to places like Wire and Saints where we rarely ever win and came up with results. Losing by only narrow margins often only down to goalkicks, even though the score line against Melbourne was one sided no one could fault the effort.....compare that to now, now McDermott has gone. Yet Sinfield has the cheek to say the ethos was wrong and it’s a happier place and say players are trying harder to return from injury all in a bid to lay blame and belittle the previous coach, which would work if performances under Sinfield hadn’t become much worst and the defence which is about attitude has become embarrassing. This coup d’état mid season to oust McDermott and GH by their long held ditractirs at the club is why we’re in this mess.