so this is a successful season is it? Avoiding bottom place on the final game and playing in the middle 8s? Are you expecting a late run to the grand final or something! Top 4 should be a given with a club Leeds size, anything else is a failure. If you start accepting this sort of season as the norm it wont be long before we are in the same position Bradford find themselves in

Yes 2/3rds have changed but the culture setters i.e. Sinfield, Peacock, JJB, McGuire and Burrow were all constants - do you think the new players adjusted to their way of doing things or the other way round?

They say that about every batch - the problem at Leeds is not the quality entering the system its the quality that emerges at the end of the system.

person
Without a rugby manager - Brian McDermott as the most senior rugby will have been setting the playing/coaching development agenda - could be the other McDermott was simply following instructions?

No it isnt. It was picked because if you had looked at 5 years or the entirety of McDermotts reign then it would have looked even better, and had you gone shorter it would have looked better.

Right now the team isnt in too bad shape. Has won 5 of 6 including beating 2 sides at the top of the league.

Any more goalpost shifting???

We've gone from you saying McDermott failed to develop the side.....until it was pointed out how 2/3rd's of it has changed.

To all the key players were the ones who were there back in 2009....until it was pointed out to you who our best players were last year (our 2 MOS nominees from the McDermott era for example)

To now "oh but they were the culture setters".....that they were but that wasn't your original point about McDermott failing to develop the squad. It would've been quite easy for a coach to come in and mess up that culture but he's gone with it and it's been used as an even bigger focus point. He also kept the likes of those culture setters in JJB, Leuluai, McGuire, Burrow going into 2015 when many, yourself included felt the old guard should've been moved on a few times during his reign especially at the end of 2014.

Nobody is goal shifting just debating your points as you raise them - some of which I agree with

I would agree I would have moved on some Leuluai for certain - don't think I ever said move Danny McGuire on

Changing personnel doesn't mean developing the side - have our attacking structures evolved under McDermott are we any better close to the line than we were under McClennan?

So how was McDermott going to mess with the culture - his track record at London was abysmal he was hardly in a position to say "come on lads I know how to make things better look at my past successes!!" more like the other way i.e. Brian come with us and we will make you look good.

The best players last year were in part your opinion what part of Cuthbertson's development was McDermott responsible for exactly? The end of the 2015 season had the old guard stamped all over it - the way they ground the victory out against Wigan in the final was no different to 2004, 2008,2009,2012 it was as if somebody just replayed a tape - if you think Cuthbertson/Hardaker were pulling the strings at the end of 2015 I think you are delusional.