WCC V Manly!!

Quote: Juan Cornetto "Obviously you have forgotten that Watkins got injured in the warm up.'"

Incorrect as others have said. Do you have a problem telling Jones-Bishop and Watkins apart? Jones-Bishop is the one in the headgear.

Quote: Juan Cornetto "Having lost a centre in the warm up meant having to move a backrower into the centre. With Smith then injured and another backrower moved into the backs this restricted any pre-game substitution plans. The coaches chose to keep Sinfield at 6 (perhaps to keep him fresh for the WCC) and not to play 2 small men in the pack at the same time (Burrow & McShane) and preferring to keep to keep Burrow on for the full 80. So they had to keep back the interchange options to rotate the big forwards as needed.'"

As the entire premise of this observation has proven to be worthless perhaps you'd care to start again. To address the last part though was it really a triumph of coaching to under utilise his available substitutions in that situation. If as you suggest he was keeping back interchanges to rotate the big forwards he didn't even manage to do that very well.

Quote: Juan Cornetto "I do not accept "any old crapola" whether it comes out of Headingley or indeed from your goodself!
Not only have you accepted it but you've added to it with some of your own re the imaginary warm-up incident.

The injury to Watkins (whenever it occurred) should have had little bearing on the use of McShane during the match and cannot be used as a contributing factor. Even if it had occurred during the warm up Leeds had Clarkson to step up as a back-rower covering the back rower covering centre, maintaining the set formula. So we are back to the injury to Smith alone and how that prevented McShane taking his role in the pre-game plan. The bench had a hooker - capable of covering half back - a second row and two props, so nothing unusual there to work around. Good utillity and options.

Playing Burrow V Wigan didn't bear that much fruit considering McShane was available but unused on the bench and his introduction helped Leeds and Burrow be more effective V Manly in the next game.

If his pre-game intention was to introduce McShane, as surely it was, why did it get blown off co in the 25th minute. There was even the half-time interval to fix a new plan for the second half. Was it then a triumph of coaching to under utilise his available substitutions?

When coaches like to talk about the 1%ers how about the minus 20%ers from the Wigan game, instead of issueing explanations that fall over with the first breath of wind.