Quote: El Diablo "I think there's an important distinction between not peaking at some points in the season and not trying.
I think anybody who really thinks this Leeds squad turns up for games and doesn't try and/or doesn't care about winning them has been watching a different team to me for the last decade or so.
I may be wrong, but I suspect the difference will be found on the training pitch. It is hard to keep a group of athletes at the absolute peak of their physical and mental sharpness for a full season. Particularly when most of them have played in almost every round of every competition for 3 years and most have played some internationals. That being the case it's not unreasonable to suppose that you might have a training schedule designed to build towards a peak, or peaks, near where the trophies are handed out. I also suspect that players and coaches will have been a little surprised and taken aback by just how far off the pace they became at some parts of the last two seasons. That was probably a slight misjudgement and while I'm sure nobody on the inside panics too much during the weekly rounds, I'm sure they were disappointed and will want to get a bit nearer the mark in those games next year.
This is subtly but crucially different from "coasting" or not trying.
To pick up on the person above who said they didn't see how Leeds had used their resources wisely, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. Given that the aim towards which those resources were being managed was to win silverware and get to finals, I'd say it's difficult to argue that the management of resources was far off.'"
Exactly.
There are only 3 finals as it were in the season, the WCC, the Challenge Cup & the Grand Final.
We were in all 3 & won 2, so very nearly a perfect season.
I'm not aware that the qualification for any of these changed during the course of the season therefore all participants knew what they had to do at the start of the season.
PS the most embarrassing thing about this thread is the mis-spelling of "embarrassing" in the title.
