I am no expert here, but I will repeat what I said earlier.......since 2006, Leeds have won the title 4 times, been beaten by the eventual winners once and only once got bounced in the first round of the play-offs......and the main bulk of the players that won ESL last year were there in 2006..........

There league form in 2011 was their worst over the 6 years, but the side that is coming towards the end of its term is one that knows how to win important KO games........let's see what 2012 and 2013 bring.....

As for Wigan, Saints and Wire being better sides on paper.........paper sides win nowt. Leeds went through a couple of false dawns before the remembered how to win......

How many internationals have Wigan got this year. Im using playing for your country as a comparator bench mark rightly or wrongly

It's like re-writing History, Leeds Rhinos were no good until Mac arrived, don't forget his first season in charge and the run of bad results!

Can I have some of what you're drinking ?

Kallum Watkins, Ryan Hall, JJB, Peacock, Webb, even Delaney, would all walk into the Saints team ahead of the current incumbents. Of the rest, you could certainly argue that Sinfield, Jones-Bishop, Hardaker, Burrow, McGuire, Leuluai, Ablett and Bailey could feature on a Saints match day.

In fact, the only Leeds players from the WCC who I don't think would get into the current Saints squad would be Clarkson, McShane and Griffin.

They're not SL champions for nothing, you know. And nor have they beaten Saints 4 times at Old Trafford in the last 5 years by being lucky.

So why were this team of alleged superstars struggling to even make the playoffs at some point? Also, why do the Leeds players rate Mac so highly?

We should capitalise on BM`s superior coaching skills........as Leeds have lost JJB for a spell perhaps we could get him to take Hickey on loan i.e. `We give you the man.......give us back the finished article`. After all it worked out fantastically well with Dave Williams and Jon Grayson, what with BM being an ex-prop an all

Seriously, anyone suggesting that the Leeds squad is not one of the strongest, if not the strongest, in SL, should not be posting on a RL website, because they would clearly know nothing about the game. I'm sure you don't mean to imply that McDermott's fasntastic coaching took a substandard group of players to the championship, because that would be laughable.

Generous interpretation is that when he arrived, the change of coaching style took time to bed in, and for a long time Leeds underperformed. Then towards the end of the season, the coach and team started working well with each other, resulting in a return to form. Ungenerous interpretation is that McDermott took a proven champion side with one of the three strongest squads in the league and nearly had them miss out on the playoffs, only to be rescued by the finals experience of those same players at the death. The truth is probably between the two.

As for the Leeds players speaking very highly of him, I'm always amazed when this old chestnut is wheeled out. As Christine Keeler said "well he would say that, wouldn't he ?". He's their boss. Their livelihood depends on his favour. RL players aren't rocket scientists, by and large, but they know enough not to slag off their coach while he holds their career in his hands. RL is a small world. Generally even if the player moves club, he won't lay into an old coach, because there's a decent chance that the merry-go-round will bring them back together. Same with opponents. Some players absolutely loathe each other off the pitch, yet only very rarely do they say anything other than complimentary things about each other. It's very different when the coach or player retires, as plenty of biographies have highlighted in recent years. It means nothing.

OK Roy.

I stand by what I said. To me Warrington have the best team, then Wigan, then St Helens and then Leeds.

Nothing wrong with an opinion, and there's no way of measuring this objectively.

I take a different view, which is that there are four sets of teams in SL. Each team can beat the other teams in its group on any given day, and would be expected to beat the teams in the groups below most of the time, but would only beat teams in the group above on unexpected occasions. Groups are :

Upper - Warrington, Wigan, Leeds, Saints

Middle - Hull, Catalans, Huddersfield, Hull KR

Lower - Salford, Wakefield, Bradford, Castleford

No-hope - Widnes

The question I haven't decided on yet is where London fit. Last year they were clearly in the lower group. This year on paper I'd put them in the middle. But their 3 games so far have been against two top sides who I wouldn't expect them to beat, and one middle side away from home, so the result was not particularly unpredictable. Next week will be an interesting game. It's at home, and if London are genuine middle group, then they have every chance of winning. But then Huddersfield are on form.

A better test I think will be the next two games against Salford and Castleford. If London lose either of those, then they're definitely in the lower group still, IMO. If they win them both, then the claim to middle group remains, but they'd need to win future fixtures against those middle teams, especially at home. Unfortunately, the Salford and Castleford games are followed by Wigan away, so I reckon out of the first 7 games they could easily be on just 2 wins, even if they are in fact now a middle team. The fixtures schedules could give rise to a quite misleading picture.

Jury's out with me at present, but a top 8 finish is still very possible at this stage.

Because they had a new coach with new methods which took a while to get used to....but once they chose to ignore the new coach and revert to the way they played before he arrived, they were back on track


....London/Harlequins players rated him highly too....he does seem to inspire loyalty, but that is not what makes a good ESL team coach, it is a trait of most good NCO's in the British Armed Forces!

Many a true word said in jest.

Have to say I'm largely with Roy on this one. Leeds still have one of the strongest squads in SL (stronger than Saints if you ask me - that's no criticism of Saints, they're bringing some promising kids through). You have to give McDermott credit for getting them into some sort of shape at the business end of the season.

His record at Quins is, for me, a wholly seperate argument. We consistently underperformed during his tenure IMO - we recruited some pretty decent players when he was there, its not like he was operating on a shoestring (until 2010 arguably).