Only one penalty was given against JJB

Not sure if it is a tactic for JJB to make so many carries. I think as the most enthusiastic player he is just usually the one to be there first. Did he play the full 80 last night? Also in fairness he made 2 offloads which can limit the average gain stats. while Galloway, Singleton, Delaney, Mullally and Oledski made none. I do think however that some of the other forwards, notably Singleton, should be stepping up and making more carries but I do not think they have the same stamina as JJB

It was good to see Oledzki make his debut but how many minutes did he get? Not enough for me.

Whilst the official stat for penalties against JJB might have been one, watching the game I saw him pinged at least 4 times. I understand that his energetic and enthusiastic nature (which I love btw) means he is more involved, he's wise enough to be able to learn during a game when the ref will penalise him.

He needs to sharpen up here IMO.

JJB has the rare JP gene, if no ones putting their hand up when it gets messy, he's there, dead on his feet or not.

True, no questioning of his mental strength. I just hope that, like JP, he recognises the waning of his physical powers and calls it a day when his time's up.

Played about 10 minutes after half time, and to be fair, I think Mac got it about right. Oldezki looked OK carrying the ball but towards the end of his stint looked to be struggling with the pace a bit defensively.

He'll certainly get better, and looked promising, but imo that wasn't the game for him to get big minutes in.

MO said as much in his post match interview. He's still a kid, a humongous mountain of a kid, but needs to be introduced sensibly.

The Opta Jones-Buchanan stat of conceding one penalty is IMO correct here.

He had an involvement in other penalty decisions, namely - he was next to last man to release when Moon was penalised for holding down on 6 mins - he was the other tackler when Golding was pinged for the ball steal on 55 mins - he hacked the loose ball through when Handley was adjudged offside on 63 mins.

The one Opta allocation with regards Leeds penalties conceded I would call debatable was the double tackle on 53 mins by Ward and Parcell where the ball came free - that went against Parcell, in live play I called it against Ward.

Shame Widnes blew a 22-0 lead against Hull today. Bad week for Wigan with all above them winning and creating a slight gap. Still got players dropping like flies (Escare, Flower, Gelling are going to miss most if not all the rest of the season) and have only won 3 of their last 9 for all the talk of them being fine even with absentees. Next 4 games for them are interesting (with plenty of guys still missing) - Wire (N) Saints (A) Wakey (H) Hull (A). They're only 4 points ahead of Saints & Wire ATM and could get caught up by them if they pick up a few losses in that run of games which is definite possibility.

I agree with your summary. Too often the camera dwells on JJB after a penalty when in fact he was not the offender. We all know he does give some penalties away but that goes with the job as he is often first tackler in and so last up and the award is given when he has bodies on top of him. Also the players that make the most
tackles run a greater risk of being pinged more often.

The irony here was Jones-Buchanan's only penalty concession on Saturday came when he tried to clear himself from the ruck only for Tony Gigot to deliberately throw the ball at him forcing the referee to act. Different referee on a different day potentially a different decision in this contentious area highlighted earlier in the season.

Its the defender's responsibility to clear the PTB area. If they are trying or at least trying to keep out of the way and the acting half throws the ball into them then it should be a scrum. But to be fair its a very difficult area to police.

Some of the defensive stats in SL are absolutely laughable. The number of missed tackles for which there is no excuse is ridiculous.

Leeds missed 30+ tackles on Saturday and still won!!

A pretty poor game but a great win, a gap is starting to form between the top 4 and the rest so it was important to keep pace. Cuthbertson and Galloway were excellent, Ward and Parcell were good and it was great to see Oledzki make his SL debut and not look out of place.

The right edge defence though was absolutely awful. There seemed to be zero communication between them which constantly left a huge gap between McGuire and Sutcliffe. This only got worse when Delaney was introduced as Ward and Sutcliffe moved slightly further in to cover his lack of lateral movement while McGuire and Briscoe stayed on the edge and Catalans took full advantage. Delaney did seem to be taken off rather early, did he get a knock?

The more I watch Sutcliffe the more I'm convinced McDermott needs to treat him the way he's treated Golding and Ward. Give him a starting shirt and let him know he's allowed to make mistakes and develop and I think he will take his game to the next level. The only question is which shirt do we give him.