I questioned bringing in 3 players who had not played ,or played little sl this season I was proved right .Widnes halves ran the play all game and kicked very well.In contrast our halves were a shambles and to fail to find touch from a free kick is schoolboy rugby.The lack of pace in our team is there for all teams to expose if they get the ball wide.The forwards as in the second half at wakefield were out enthused

I lost count of how many times the ball should have gone to Riddy but didn't. One of the best kickers in the game. He was anonymous because of the tactics that were employed not because he had a bad game. The two times the ball went to him on the fifth we put them under pressure.

When are all the riddy loves going realis that he is not super league if he was he would of been playing it a long time ago.

Reffy, I agree about Hampshire,Mitch Brown should be full back,Higson wasn't awful,he just seemed to wander around the field,and deffo Weston is not SL standard.

THIS
Seemed obvious that we were playing to Reynolds pretty much all game, have to say it was a strange tactic and turned out the be a poor one his in play kicking game is not his best attribute- goes down the opposition throat far to often

Coming away from a game disappointed is fine. Coming away from a game angry is not. Yesterday it was the latter. It really was embarrasing. Danny Craven would still be playing in the championship had they not sold Brown and Gilmore hadn't been injured. Yet he showed more dynamism than I have seen from any of our half backs in all our 8 games to date.

Let's all just get a bit more realistic here , our squad is as good as 75 % of the other squads in SL , to just constantly claim this player , that player isn't good enough and needs replacing is pointless , just where are these replacements that are better than those we currently have ?

We were poor yesterday , especially in decision making , Neil and the coaching team will be well aware of that and it is their job to rectify it for next week

We have who we have , unlike last year where we could look to fringe/unhappy players in higher leagues to strengthen us we no longer can do that , we are still being considered by the officials as a Championship part time team that has just moved up a level , it will take time for that perception to change , although it will always remain to a degree when we play the ' top ' historical teams

So let's all calm down , we can beat anybody in this league on our day , but also quite easily lose to anybody as well , the % s between succes and failure are small in most games , we have been competitive in all but our first game ( and a bit more composure in the 1 st 20 minutes would have seen us with a 10/12 point lead before Cas crossed our line )

Work to be done , we as fans need to keep our nerve , we are in SL , unlike the last 3/4 years we will not get everything our own way , just continue to support our team , all of them

Indeed he had a good game , helped by our defence watching and waiting for him to pass to one of his forwards instead of tackling him

But how many of our fans suggesting we need better half backs would have pinpointed him as a replacement before yesterday ? , all players have good games and bad , the very best have more good than bad , we need to put confidence back in our team

We started poorly yesterday and gave Widnes our confidence , when we finally got it back to be 1 point behind we gifted it to them again with a stupid tackle on the last , dumb RL , cannot get away with that in SL

Neil and the staff will sort it , new target is now 36 points

That's the spirit, Gubs!

This is bang on! our hookers voted for Reynolds on the last every time. If Ridy is not Super League standard then Ben Reynolds certainly isn't. Ridy set 3 of our tries up yesterday. Ridy with Drinkwater needs to be our halfbacks and if that doesn't work then we need to go out and get a stand off. Seems that Hull KR have just signed a decent one from Aus.

Have they ? , what's his NRL/SL record like ?

Well it's not too bad Keith , I'll ignore his season at London , so it currently stands at played 7 , won 3 , lost 4

So who is this superstar Aussie HKR have signed ?

My point being , up to 10 days and 120 minutes of RL ago pretty much everybody was happy with our players , what is certain is we have who we have for the time being , I certainly wouldn't expect us to be wasting any Salary Cap money bringing in players right now , given the small size of our squad we might have to bring in players due to injury in other positions

So we just support who we have

But not as big as any club running an academy ,And IMO the only reason we might lose our SL status this season is a major injury crisis , then we might need players in other positions

what are those 3 players SL stats Keith ?

Who said he was a superstar? My wording was 'Decent' (which a lot of his old clubs fans are saying about him). My point was that players are still out there if they are needed.

We already have at least ' decent ' , so how might ' decent ' help us ? , unless you want us to keep buying ' decent ' until we find somebody better ? , how long might that take ?

After Wakey , I posted that we had too many poor tacklers - not usually a problem with Leythers! Widnes showed the poor tacklers outnumber the good uns. Situation has to change, otherwise THE NIGHTMARE SCENARIO> (End up in Qualifiers and finish 6th)

Our backs do not have enough pace so I know who I'd have back.

On another subject which is still bothering me why did Riddy not do the kicking yesterday.

Worst Leigh performance for a long time yesterday. Well not that long. Second half away at Wakefield was similar.

Good defense against Giants,Saints & Wire won us those 3 games. Poor defense against Wakey & Widnes lost us those 2 games. Let's hope we can put it right on Friday.

We were poor today, victories came when we started fast and in particular our line speed defence. My worry is that we seem to want other teams to run hard at us and then we will knock them down with good aggressive tackling. We have no answer if a team uses their backs to outsmart us, very evident today with their half backs especially Gilmour who was outstanding.

Riddy has taken some stick on this thread, but when you look back at our tries he given a couple of excellent balls to set the tries up. Reynolds is a good young talent, but does seem to panic as seen at Eakey in the second half last week and again today.

His tactical kicking is not tactical he simply sent bombs that Widnes dealt with comfortably. IMO Riddy should have been taking the ball more on the 5th tackle and used his considerable kicking skills rather than the ball going to Reynolds every time.

Hock and Hansen were absolutely excellent in both attack and defence.

Hampshire is unconvincing and seemed very reluctant to take the ball in. He says he is a half back he isn't not is he a full back. It becomes clear why Wigan did not want him and why Cas played him on the wing.

Agree with most of that , if Riddy wasn't getting the ball , that's down to himself and whoever was in the hooker role at that time

With regards Hampshire at FB , I certainly don't want him charging full pelt into the oppositions forwards when returning a kick , some bigger robust full backs ( Hardaker,Inglis,Hayne,Bosc , even Brown for us ) can do that , the majority don't , instead crabbing along the line looking for a gap using up precious seconds to allow our ' Dads Army ' to get back onside , Tomkins,Escare,McNally even Billy Slater do the less direct option

Drinkwater will be out for 2-3 weeks.

The 8th consecutive match our kicking game has been worse than the oppositon, in fact I would say its the worse in SL.

Why are 80% of all kicks going through Reynolds? I posted last week that he may as well just passed it to Jones-Bishop at Wakefield, he may as well as done the same again. We made 2 decent kicks all match yesterday both of which were executed by Ridyard ?

Denis Betts lost 4 players to concussion during the match and had used up all his subs 10 mins into the second half !And still they wanted it more than Leigh !

We need new impetus and we are badly missing a creative spark. We have now lost Drinkwater until after Easter to compound the problem.

So , I have been critical of Hampshire as a full back but now is the time for him to revert to the role where he made his name as a kid, scrum half. Reynolds can take the FB berth. He has the size for it, defensively sound and played the position previously in SL for Castleford.

We have a few players out of sorts. If Weston has been chomping at the bit for an opportuniity then after that shift, he aint going be hammering on Jukes door for a while again.

Green is 6 foot 4 of garbage and we were warned.

Tickle had his worse game in a Leigh shirt, directly responsible for 2 missed tackles that led to 2 Widnes tries,not forgetting his brain fart penalty at 25.24 when we just looked like we may turn it around but ended up conceding the match winner from it. Vae was not much better.

Dawson is nothing without Tonga at the side of him. Seems half the player.

Big calls need to be made and Drinkwater is a huge loss with a heavy programme of fixtures ahead.

Harold you have just about covered everyone, except Whalley the programme seller,and the guy who does the quiz in Legends Bar and Nucky the bloke who ushers whoever is making the half time draw on the pitch.

Either Higson or Dawson should move to centre with brown back at full back and naughton or Hampshire on the wing.

Would bring Burr back in for green and Stewart for Vea.

Why does Ryan Hampshire keep being selected ??? I'd give Curtis Naughton a 'run out' instead, least he's got some pace.