Agreed, and cant blame him with some of the stick he gets ( me included to be honest) but I respect him enough as he pulls the shirt on and still goes out there

excuses

anyone/anything but smith

I do find it hard to accept some of the excuses for smith. I actually think on paper, we have a far better squad than McDermott had in 2018, when he was sacked after winning the GF the season before, so I wouldn’t say the roster is the issue.

Too many players are going backwards under smith, cam smith being case in point. Frawley was smiths choice, as was goudemand, who are not the players we need. Every single poster on here knew we were a prop short going into the season, but the coaching staff apparently knew otherwise.

For me it’s not even the losses that are bad. If there was good performances and exciting rugby, I’d be less worried. For me the rugby is utterly dire to watch, and we seem to be getting worse.

Case in point, we seem to run a play most weeks we play where we try to switch the play to make space around the ruck (it’s a play salford we’re exceptional at last season). Almost without exception, we have a player who gets in the way of the switch and completely kills it. Every time I just think what on earth are they doing in training.

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Games against Cas , Hull and London should not be big games , They are all Garbage ! , if anyone considers them big games then that shows how far we have sunk .

The playing staff are not good enough , but the coaching is terrible and most of the team are now linked to R.S , he needs to go now . The next few games will just gloss over the problems and then we will be back to square one .

Injuries have hit us hard i admit that but come on performances were poor even before that and on Friday Saints had far more missing than us once Lees and Lomax had gone off.

Doing Nothing about the situation is a severe case of negligence .

Do you really man that, Tad? I would have said that our next coaching appointment is the most vital since Murray in 98. Anybody won't do.

I think he is just showing his frustration as he was calling out Smith when others on here were clearly defending the indefensible . We all have opinions and will not always be right but Tad was and is .

Even Smiths greatest supporters bar the odd one have realised he does not have what it takes .

And therein lays the problem, some people just seem to want Smith out at any cost, the same happened with Agar.........

I'm not sure this roster IS that good though. The benchmark is Wigan, Wire and St Helens and we're just not as good as them. We need a team which is BETTER than them. Our job isn't to catch them up, it's to overtake them and that's why these constant squad and project signings drive me bonkers. We need several more Croft standard signings, it's not good enough just to have one good player.

Frawley is on Smith 100%. Goudemand, Donaldson and Bentley are all physically too similar and similarly limited. You could use one but not all three - hopefully as some good young talent matures that will change over the next year or two anyway. I suspect Smith was shaken by the mutiny last year with Austin and MacDonald etc., he has over-compensated with steady Eddies.

Re. this idea of playing attractive rugby whilst we lose games, I just think that's a fantasy sorry (you're not the only one to say this). If you play attractive rugby, it includes hard defence and precision at times, it's not all about winging the ball about and miracle plays. It's attractive when it's successful and you beat teams with it. If you're often getting beaten, for me by definition it's not attractive rugby you're playing - you're probably dropping the ball, missing your D and not executing correctly etc. The only exception might be really close thrillers, but if we lost enough of those the knives would still be out.

Which is where I agree on your last point - when we have tried worked moves we have looked garbage, and that does look a coaching issue. The only play which works is the Croft kick out to Handley in space, I can't think of another this season. Leigh in particular throw great shape at you in good ball by contrast.

They are big games in context of this season, and us salvaging anything positive from 2024. They're also massive for RS.

I know I'll get shot down yet again but we would have been leading Saints at half time had we not given a couple of very poor errors away in our own half and then failed to defend the next sets. We should have gone in ahead but for individual errors and some soft D. The way we concede tries just before half time is a killer. We know we struggle physically at times and therefore we have to play tight and precise.

The way we were so soft coming out after half time was alarming though - that game was there for the taking and we came up with a garbage ten minutes to effectively hand the game to Saints, who came out with the right attitude.

We haven't really looked too close to beating any of the top sides this season other than Cats at home, who didn't play great against us.

If my Aunty was a man she’d be my Uncle. We made the errors, we didn’t defend the sets. We weren’t good enough.

You could argue that Leeds are the most consistent team in the league as we are very good at replicating the same thing in games. Unfortunately passive defence unforced errors and set plays that are telegraphed ang invariably missed up is not a recipe for success.

You could argue that Leeds are the most consistent team in the league as we are very good at replicating the same thing in games. Unfortunately passive defence unforced errors and set plays that are telegraphed ang invariably missed up is not a recipe for success.

Have GH and the board come to that conclusion yet i'm not conivinced.

I’m not saying we were good enough. Obviously we weren’t.

Jim we were miles off saints in that first half. Let go of the straw clutching we're just plain crap'.