I do agree with this, he’s learning but I personally like what I see, I like people who look at things differently.

Why are we a training centre for someone learning their trade? I'm sure during the search last year, GH said it was his biggest ever appointment and was a job that required someone with experience.

Now, suddenly, we have someone inexperienced and learning their trade whilst the squad still needs a major rebuild.

The whole set-up is a dog's dinner.

I’ve just watched the second half again because I’m a sadist.
At half time Cas had made 181 tackles and we made 133, we also made 6 handling error in 1st half, sky stats.

I made some notes myself on 2nd half, these won’t be perfect because I spent some time shouting at the telly.
I think we had 6 PTB in their 25 at 65 minute mark.
42 mins - penalty MacDonald high tackle, soft
48 mins - penalty Martin strip, soft
51 mins - Martin , knock on
54 mins - MacDonald PTB error
56 mins - Sezer, knock ball down on Miller
56 m - Fusitua jams in, Cas try
58 m - penalty Austin kick off out on full
61 m - Fusitua PTB error
67m - Sangare - lost ball in offload
68m - penalty, Roberts offside
69m - penalty, Smith strip, soft
70m - short restart, Cas get ball back
74m - Olpherts, dropped ball, try blown
77m - Austin dropped ball, last tackle.


Think only 15 PTBs in their 25 in whole second half
Think we had approx 50 plays where we passed twice or less or kicked, bulk were 1 man runs
Think approx 13 plays where we passed three times or more
I’m including a pass from dummy half as a pass in above.

It was dire and error riddled and Cas played at a higher level of intensity because it was v Leeds.
We still only lost by 6. They are fairly poor and will
Lose plenty this season. We may lose plenty as well.

As Rohan said we gave ourselves no chance to win, very poor and showed almost nothing with the ball

He might well have said that during his search but the experience requirement clearly went out of the window. Dogs dinner or work in progress? We'll know soon enough. Personally I'm happy to run with Smith for a while yet.

Thanks for the recap Sir Greg P. Saved me some pain there. Maybe you can tell me: were my eyes playing tricks or was Lisone looking in even worse shape than when he first rolled up at HQ?

Thanks for taking that bullet for me. It's been nagging at me all day. In short, through our own errors, we made impossible to win. Lot's to learn.

INOUT
Completely agree, he is no guru and is def learning. There are aspects I really disagree with (Can Smith should be made Captain, short kick offs just look plain amateur.)
But he’s young, hungry and seemingly on it for long run. If he did too well too soon he’d might attract NRL interest. Best to let him set the systems up and recruitment over next 2-3 yrs imho…..

Full game up on a popular video streaming site for anyone who missed and is a saddist!

A poor performance for sure, and a poor start to the season. We all knew this season was going to be a transition season and that to 4 was the aim. Disruption in the camp staff of kick off won't have helped. Cakes for Smith to go are madness. He is clearly a long term appointment and will take time to get things right. What he's not afraid to do is make hard decisions, something that has been leaking at the club for almost a decade. We are seeing poor players identified and moved on. We will come right, we have big players to come in, and we have players yet to peak.

Saints sailed very close to 3 in a row against a side beaten by 60 last week who turned up with a similar intensity to cas. I really like Smith but I think he needs to find some balance to his philosophies on the game as he seems to want to contradict all fundamental principles, some of which will always be true due to the nature of the sport.

Im not sure on his philosophy of every game is its unique entity because momentum that comes from learning and progression is true of any skill or activity.

Dosnt help when in form players like Walters lose there place while out of shape puddings like Lisone keep theres.

It seems to me that we rely heavily on Martin and when he has a good game so do Leeds. He had a poor one against Cas and it seemed to trickle down to every department. I think Martin is more influential than most give him credit for

Don’t think that’s true. Apart from good goal kicking, not seen an awful lot from Martin since beginning last season. His defence has been woeful so far this year too…..
Personally would not have renewed his contract….

Yes, I think that's twice been shown in games against Castleford where a simple hard nosed game plan would have sufficed and delivered comfortable wins against weak or weakened sides. On balance though, he's still done great. There are some who seem to want to believe he was lucky or "rode a wave" to the GF last year. If he did, it was a wave of his own generation. I have a bias towards him because his arrival seems to have facilitated the departure of number of players who were either past their best or never quite good enough for Leeds - in my opinion. His big challenge will be to use the cap space we should have next year to bring in players who can transform the side, and then come up with a style that makes a consistent and high performing team. In the short term, I'm backing Smith and the team to come up with a win against Catalans next week.