Is being trotted out in the YEP again...


That view has not changed, but the pressure is mounting and will increase as the launch of next year’s season tickets draws near.

McDermott obviously hasn’t made the impact hoped for when he took over from Brian McClennan last autumn.

Some of his decisions, such as leaving out Luke Burgess and Jay Pitts when both appeared to be in form and dropping Rob Burrow to the bench, will be questioned, but it is tough to blame the sort of basic errors that Rhinos are making on the coach.

Without rehashing previous points, he has inherited his current team, had no time to prepare pre-season, which is arguably one of the most important periods of any side’s year and has had to cope with a significant injury crisis.'"

There is no case to keep him. Guilty, send him down!

No it does'nt. But this is Darths mouthpiece in the press. They wont sacrifice "exclusives / scoops / inside info / rumours / page filler" by sticking in the knife will they? ATEOTD most folk on here go to the games and see with thier own eyes just how crap we look at the moment and no amount of soap box sermonising from lickspittle EP journo's can hide that fact.

McDumnutt waxes lyrical about the players "winding thier necks in" and "not getting on with the job" time to practice what he preaches im afraid. Excuses, excuses, excuses.

The argument to give him more time was a valid one (the same I was applying to poor Rob Powell down here) because I don't think a coach can be judged on just one season. This isn't football and I like the idea of coaches being given more time.

However, McDermott and Hetherington seem intent on draining away any remaining goodwill by re-signing players who seem to be on the way down e.g. Webb, Kirke, Leulai. Powell and David Hughes are going the same way at Quins with the baffling decision to give Chad Randall a 2-year contract extension.

Hetherington and McDermott must surely be aware that they'll need to do something, anything, to give the fans some confidence. I can only assume they've got their eye on one or two eye-catching signings.

That isn't to say I'm defending McDermott - I saw Quins gradually go on the slide under his tenure - but he in the conjunction with the Sleeve must have something going on....

Eye catching signings? well step up Tony Martin....................


Oh, wait.................

Must think we're all idiots. Unfortunately most of the general public are.

[i"He inherited the current squad"[/i.... and that's a bad thing???

As the article points out, this time last season we were the reigning champions after an unprecedented 3 in a row win, and in the ensuing 11 months BMD has taken us to mid table mediocrity.

He arrived last summer with a pretty thin CV, and will depart with an equally anorexic document.

There is no case to keep him ,he's proved to be out of his depth.
When the season kicked off and even 10 games in i was one of the ones prepared to give him time and agreed with a lot of what Smith said in his YEP article but since then he's just gone from one farce to another time for GH to admit the erorr and rectify it accordingly.

I started writing this trying to defend BM, but it didn't end up like that!

Selections - I think a few of the bizarre selection issues are possibly for disciplinary reasons. But if the club just came out and said it like other clubs do (Wigan, Cas, Hull KR and Crusaders recently) then at least the fans would understand instead of jumping to conclusions. Could this be why Burrow was dropped to the bench, Pitts doesn't get much of a look in any more, Clarkson and McShane were dropped for a match or two? Seems to be the reason why Burgess and Cross went, based on comments made in the press after they'd gone (sorry can't find the link right now). Could also be the reason why players like Kirke and Haraki seem undroppable (not that I'm questioning their ability )

New signings - I don't think we'll see any till August (or whenever the deadline is for being able to speak to players from other clubs) so there is time yet for a few big name signings. That doesn't mean to say I'm expecting any though, and this deadline doesn't include signing NRL players. Which kind of leads into...

Inherited the Current Squad - Which included Matt Diskin who was let go while he was in charge, along with Cross and Burgess. There have been players available mid season (the free for all at Wakefield, Jordon Tansey, Martin Gleeson) but with the juniors available then if the first team is really that bad as to blame the current squad (which BM is currently re signing!) then there are alternatives there.

Injury Crisis - I can't think of a game we have lost where you can blame the ability of the 17 put out for losing. We managed to win the cup game (against Crusaders I think), where we lost three players due to injury and only had 1 player on the interchange for 30 mins. The team that drew with Wigan were good enough to win and the team that lost to Bradford weren't injured they just didn't know how to stop giving penalties away.

Pre season - I'm not sure when the events of pre season are arranged, but I would have thought BM had time to re arrange things if he wanted to. He had time to cancel the warm weather training so the team could stay and train in the worst winter we have seen for years (and then moan about not being able to do any outdoor training )

The thing that is killing us most than can easily be sorted in the discipline. And who can sort that out Brian?

There is no case here, it's nonsense. This paragraph highlights how bull$h!t this article isAfter three years of success, Rhinos have struggled to know how to cope when things go wrong – and almost everything that could go wrong has done so.[/i"

So we didn't know how to deal with losing every second row forward in the club in 2008? We didn't have to get Anselme on loan and we didn't have to play Cas with practically the entire first team missing. We also didn't know how to cope with the dissapointments of 2005 and the poor 2006 season.
It's rubbish, this team has had to scrap for everything and taken nothing for granted without being punished.

IMO he is way out of his depth.

The longer his tenure, the more cracks and holes are appearing.

The players and their poor performances have to be noted as well. But Mac doesn't rectify or punish their faults. mac always moans about discipline, yet he displays none of his own as he can't shake this out of them.

Coaches are people of action. Mac isn't a coach. We've got 2 steaming number 2's.

Good post Mr. Heron, sir.

That is it in a nutshell

Can't imagine why any Loiner would even contemplate getting rid of Agents Ma.... sorry, of Mac and Lowes...

I was willing to give this joker an entire season to prove himself but never in my wildest dreams would I have thought that he could brought the club to such lows in such a very little amount of time.

It took McBanana a full 3 seasons to screw Bradford over, McMuppet seems to be doing it in 1!

That last thing I want to read is the sycophantic mouthpieces at the YEP suggesting that we should give him a break - I'd like to give him a break too right ...