Let's be fair, Lilley is young and clearly has not got the skill set (yet!) to be a top quality leader and playmaker for Leeds. My concern is how he goes about "learning" the skills he is missing. No doubt Maguire and Burrow have in the past, and to a certain extent still have some great skills set. Great players though, rarely make great coaches. Mentors maybe, facilitators of learning often less so. Who at the club specialises in how people actually LEARN.

I am a coach myself, admittedly not rugby but it doesn't really matter as it's still skill acquisition at the end of the day. What environments bring out movement changes, how do players learn best, how can they perform skills in context with the actual game of rugby league. These are the questions I hope the coaching staff all have as basic skill sets themselves.

Do Leeds behind all their "whistles and bells" actually have really quality coaches? I don't know the answer to this. I have seen some of the Embedded Pathway coaching and I am not entirely convinced by some of the methods. I appreciate Leeds haven't signed up to this but I would be intrigued to see what methods our coaches employ. Are we merely seeing players come through as a result of a simple numbers game?

Humans are clever (!) and set the appropriate tasks can self organise. This way is proven to facilitate the learning of new skills better than the "do this" "do that" approach that sadly seems a pre disposed trait of ex/current players trying to pass on knowledge. Are the coaches who develop these young "talents" highly educated in skill acquisition or are we seeing a culture of "we have always done it this way" beginning to rear its ugly head??

Just my thoughts but would be interested to hear others.

For me we shouldn't even have the question "is his defence going to be as good as Zak"......it should simply be "is his defence going to be good enough", I have no reason to think it won't be. I see nothing in his abilities/attribrutes that are an obvious weakness in that regards. His main weakness at the moment for playing FB is just his lack of experience in the role but that surely will improve with time, a preseason under his belt there, and more games.

If the prerequisite for a new FB is that he has to be as good defensively as Hardaker then we'll be searching for one for a long time.

Our first choice pack including subs is as good as anyone , our centres and wingers are as good as any other team , we may get away with Sutty at fullback the jury is still out on that one . Where we will lose out is the crucial positions of halfback and coach .

Very good points. Sutcliffe has quality. He looked very good before his injury. I hate to do this but I am tending to now agree with JC, who some time ago suggested his best position would be centre. I don't think he looks relaxed or happy at FB but when he sits out on the right when playing 6 he looks very natural there.

I think if he has the desire to improve he can be a brilliant 6 as he has all the attributes for it. If he keeps working on his kicking game and game management (which should come with more games anyway) then I think he could become an international mainstay.
If he doesn't improve then he may well end up at centre or possibly fullback.

Or Featherstone...