Well, Moon, Mags & Delaney still missing. 8 out of arguably the first choice 17 not fit to play, again!

We're just keeping players fresh ready for the middle 8's campaign. They've won everything else, might as well go for a new 'league' title and win the middle 8's

Which is why pace matters.

How many of McGuire and Burrow's tries were scored backing up breaks and half-breaks of each other and others. A sizeable number for both.

Sutcliffe made a break looked inside and found Lilley. Sure, he could and should have given Watkins a walk-in but having pace on both sides should have been a try either way.

After cheaply handing over a lot of ball on early plays on the Hudds line, that opportunity was the one Leeds had to take. If we could have had a 2 score half time lead that would probably had been enough to squeeze home.

Could still see one of Moon or Mags tomorrow i am informed

We have been spoiled. In their younger years they were both extremely quick. Mags in particular had real pace. Burrow still has considerable gas, for me it's why he still causes defences trouble and deserves a place in the team.
The one and only real advantage of being small on a rugby pitch is being quicker off the mark than bigger guys. A lot of big men can really shift once they get going (Ian Kirke is one example of that), but small guys can be quick over 10-20 metres. There is not a lot of benefit to being small playing rugby beyond that. As a small guy I can speak from experience.

Hearing that Moon will be involved

Early in their careers when they were scoring tries for fun backing up breaks, defences were very poor at tracking back and disrupting the break. Now wingers, centres, second rows etc track back and get in the way of passes, or as in this case, to tackle the man receiving the pass.
That rarely happened when McGuire and Burrow were Sutcliffe & Lilley's age.

I read GH's comments on injuries with interest. He seemed to be suggesting that the game itself was causing injuries and that Leeds have been fielding injured players because they have to. I call bull on both counts.

Firstly, SL is nowhere near as physically tough as the NRL, and yet we're not seeing injury crises at any NRL sides as bad as Leeds. SL sides playing more games, but with smaller squads is more the point.

Players who haven't been able to train but having to play hurt is more the problem, leading to them re-injuring themselves or simply not recovering properly. Maybe even picking up new injuries as a result of having to modify what they do.

When we had an A Team league and sides had a bad run with injuries, they could pick a game where they thought they could get away with picking a bunch of reserve graders, giving players a week more to recover. A genuine feeder system would work the same way.

Sadly the league went for a cheap, halfway house solution with just a few players in a feeder team, with lots of restrictions on numbers etc.

Leeds have got away with this because we've had some incredibly resilient (lucky) core of players with respect to injury. Almost all of our key players over the last decade have escaped long-term injuries during the season (I can't think of when we lost two or more for extended periods at the same time except for the back end of last year), and almost every time we've played a final we've had most of the squad intact, or at least as intact as our opponents.

Bottom line is we've been taking a risk running small squads. Leeds have generally done well out of it - far better than some teams. So I don't have much sympathy if the system GH helped put in place bites us on the . If GH wants a fix, bring back reserve grade.

I think that's the way it might seem but we have had plenty of injury issues - in some cases a lot more than other clubs. We have just handled it well up to now.
End of 2010 we lost Peacock and Mags (and Burgess) with serious, long term injuries. Brent Webb and Toopi, JJB for various, and I remember one game against Cas when we had Webb at half and most of the team missing (although some of those were due to international duty).
It's true, we have managed to have most key players fit come GF time, but so have our opposition.

Fully agree about reserve grade. It's not just about having a pool of players it's about developing younger players in adult rugby rather than the loan/dual reg system which I don't believe works well for young players.

Moon was down to be involved in the Salford game and that was 4 weeks ago. It amazes me how long injuries take to clear up in a losing team. If we were flying high some of these injuries would be classed as slight knocks and players would be declaring themselves fit to return.

To be fair Hetherington is saying the sport should've been investigating why these injuries are happening, what type etc and he's right. As a sport we're p/ss poor at this kind of thing. For instance there was a piece on Sky Sports recently about concussion in sport and while it mentioned RL it focussed on other sports because we don't record the stats around concussion.
We have a small pool of players and the sport is being affected by having too many of them out injured, so we should be finding out what's going on and why.

I agree part of it is probably the small squads issue but part is probably due to the wrestle in the tackle too. If we compiled injury stats as a sport then we could see whether players are receiving the same types of injuries. Also, are players coming back too soon? Are they receiving top diagnosis/treatment/rehab etc etc.