Old Zak there conveniently out.

Lucky escape for him. Would've got a rousing welcome no doubt.

I agree that he needs to go, and that’s been clear for some time.
I’m going to be controversial though: his Leeds career has been defined by a sequence on niggling injuries. It does happen.
I would question his attitude to conditioning through periods, and he is a liability for penalties which is his behaviour... but I’m sure he would have loved to replicate that England form with Leeds.
There are things he can rightly be criticised for but we should always understand that RL players are human too, and nobody sets out to do badly.

Something that has to be taken into consideration in the 'has the standard plummeted' debate is the way in which defensive structures have improved beyond recognition in the last 10 years or so. As someone else has posted, this hasn't helped the entertainment one jot, but it does make comparisons with the teams 20 years ago that much harder.

I do think that there's something to be said for the top teams not having the same number of quality players that they used to, but I think that's true compared to even 6 or 7 years ago, let alone a generation ago. Take Leeds and Wigan, our 2011 challenge cup final was littered with players that would walk into the current Saints and Wire teams, but equally we're better than our late 90s and early 2000s teams too. The salary cap and the lure of Australia for our better players means that the top teams aren't as good, but I'd say the average level is probably about the same. If the standard across the board was that bad then it would reflect in the national team, which is every bit as good as it has been for some time.

On last Friday, two teams that are really not looking impressive at all. I thought Wigan were a little better over the 80, but Leeds' size had me worried, especially when we had our young lads one, there were some physical mismatches at times. Can't see Leeds going down for the same reason, eventually you'll have more physically than at least London if not 3 or 4 more teams come the end of the season.

There is absolutely no way the defences are an improvement on the 2000-2010 period. In that time you had constant high intensity, in your face, hard hitting defence. None of this soft outlawing of certain tackles we have now. What we have now is an increase in the wrestling technique, I give you that, and a pool of referrees who simply do not understand the rules and how to enforce them. Other than that it is very much sanitised version of what we had.

Not as aggressive, but more organised. You never used to get any of the wrestling/lying on to anything like the same extent. Control of the ruck is a massive, massive part of the game now for everyone in a way that I don't think it was prior to 2010.

One on one defending, fair enough.

I agree with you on controlling the ruck, but insist that is a problem of how refs interpret the rules. They simply don't work to them, and as a result ruin the game as a whole. If they did it properly we would need to get back to the actual tackle technique and defensive line, rather than the half hearted efforts needed these days.