In my opinion this club started to go downhill after 2005 when it was revealed that Bradford Bulls cheated the salary cap in order to become champions that year. This year and last year in some ways is parallel to 2005 and 2006. In 2005 and 2010 we had reasonable seasons despite not become champions them years. Unfortunately 2006 and 2011 are probably the most unbearable years in super league that Rhino fans have had to endure. Mind you I’m sure that the Dean Lance years come close too.

In 2007 it was announced that Tony Smith was leaving the Rhinos club and we went on to win the Grand Final that year. The one thing that Tony Smith has become good at is coaching teams to pull off impressive victories in one off games. However they was no doubt in my mind that 2007 was the right time to go for Tony Smith because the rugby at Headingley was becoming very stale indeed under him. The 2007 win only papered over the cracks. If my memory serves well Leeds Rhinos only seemed to get up for super league games in 2007 that they needed to like Games against St Helens. The challenge cup however was a totally different matter.

For the next two seasons this was replicated under the leadership of Brian McClennan very well indeed. How on earth we won the league leaders in 2009 is anyone’s guess but we certainly didn’t win it by putting in a great effort during that season (2009). In fact we put in a similar boring and disinterested effort that we put in this season (2011).

Ever since 2005 I have seen season upon season decline in quality. Oh we’ve had some fantastic games since then but super league is full of mediocrity. Leeds Rhinos could play mediocre against a mediocre team and still come away with a victory. What has happened at the club is complacency and that complacency has finally caught up with the club.

I agree with the saying that ‘if it isn’t broke then don’t fix it’ and the complacency during the seasons 07 – 09 worked very well in the clubs favour. The price paid for that complacency hasn’t been too high yet but it’ll be interesting to see if Gary and Paul ever do bring success to Headingley again.

Bass Headingley anyone? It's nice to see the usual suspects on here mithering on.

Successful business on paper. Secure bank balances. Self funded transfers rather than borrowing. Real plans for the future of the club. No promotion and or relegation. A shortage of quality on the open market. Building slowly for a good future.

And more importantly, showing us just who are the post 2004 bandwagoners who now claim ownership of "Their beloved club".

The opposition fans taunt us and take the mick about how far the "Mighty" have fallen. Sad thing is, if people hadn't be poncing about like Hyacinth Bucket and Lording it like Fauntleroy whilst we were on top then we wouldn't be getting the flack now.

I remember at the end of WIgans era of dominance, when for I think the third time in a row Wigan came to HQ to get beaten, a Wigan fan on the WT was humorously heard to remark, "You're making a bluddy habit of this".

I wish certain posters on here would accept the fall from grace of their "beloved" club with the same degree of stoicism.

and of course Gareth Ellis !!!!!

Didn't he sign at the beginning, rather than the end of, 2005?

Well it says that Wigan had more players in that England team than Leeds had, and that none of the Leeds players actually came from Leeds (not that the last bit really matters )

A serious question now, did the decline of the Leeds youth systems start with Bastion leaving or was it prior to that when Dean Bell left?

Are you serious?

You're embarrassing

well maybe, but its basically the same time frame we were discussing

The club must have made good money with all the finals over the last decade. A hell of alot more than most of SL. Not much to show for it on the pitch IMO at present.
The challenge cup against Hull is a must win now, or Pinky and Perky should be sent packing.
If we loose against Hull in the cup, a caretaker coach should be appointed and Hetherington needs to get a top coach from the NRL for next season, plus some better recruits too.

However you are speaking of supporters of sporting clubs, a band of people who traditionally cannot accept the fact that in sport you are either in a winning cycle or a losing cycle and when you are in the losing cycle its because its someone else's turn to win.

I often wonder what on earth some people do in their life outside of rugby league to make the subject so important to them, not a lot I suspect, thats understandable if you're 15 years old and nothing has really happened in your life to date but some of these people are adults FFS.

Our great crop of academy players that became the backbone of the successful years were a mixture of good player management AND luck. Even Manchester United haven't managed to replicate the Giggs, Beckham and Neville crop that starred for so long in their team. We were lucky that a great batch of youth players came through in that era and it is unlikely it will happen again any time soon. What we are seeing now with the likes of Watkins and BJB is probably more realistic.

What has disappointed me the most is that we no longer sign players the quality of Peacock and Ellis. When promising players at clubs like Cas and Salford decide to move on its to our (so called big club) rivals across the Pennines.

Sackcloth and ashes.

The preferred attire of stoic supporter.

And Manchester United didn't have a crop of young players that good since the Busby team that died in Munich.

This, for me, is part of the problem. There is no such thing as a "production line" of talent and no club, not even those who can attract the better youngsters from the better amateur clubs, can keep bringing through "batches" of 5/6/7 quality youngsters as we did in the early 2000s. We'll get the odd one or two come through, as we are doing with the likes of Watkins, BJB, but it will be a long time before local young lads are the 'backbone' of the team in they way that they have been in the past decade.



When your youth system isn't bearing fruit the way it used to, that is when the salary cap starts to hit you.

You can get away with paying kids next to nothing and, if you look at the 17 from the 2004 Grand Final, I bet that you could pick out at least two players who would have been on less (or at best, barely more) than £20k. When those players become older, with a few GF winners rings, World Club championship medals and GB / England caps, you can't keep paying them that. The chances are that the likes of Ian Kirke, Jamie Jones-Buchanan, Luke Burgess, Ali Lauitiiti and a few others probably represent very poor value in the context of the salary cap. In the past, we have had younger players doing a similar or better job for considerably less that we are paying those players today, which frees up cash for bigger name signings. We don't have that spare cash any more and we don't have the players in the junior ranks to replace those that are "tying up" (for want of a better expression) that money.

A very good assessment.