You mean this reply to a (rightly) cocky Cas fan who was slating the Rhinos?

Im not convinced the re-build has begun to the degree it needs to be tbh there's huge holes that still need filling & wrt youngsters out on dual reg id hoped the likes of Lilley Sutty Baldwinson would all be regulars in their favoured positions.
Of course the Sutcliffe situation & how it's been handled is a different debate aswell.
When we started the transition in 2001/02 the youngsters had a much more solid team to come into littered with strong leaders & with more mongrel about em.
Yes the Widdop links will be good if we pull it off but i think we've left it very late to start both on/off the which which imo wastes another year.

It's where to start?
We're desperately short on individuals both old and young. To some extent that's down to McDermott's team ethic but his point has been hammered home over the years by his two recently-retired on-field generals. The way the current youngsters have taken it on board seems total and it could take years to address this issue, unless of course the current squad suddenly finds cohesion and belief. It'll be a bolt from the blue if this happens, mind.

Makes it all the less likely that Hetherington will sack McDermott then.

Am I missing something here? Our coach (talking about the letter than came out from GH) seems to think that the demise in performance has only just begun and that all this fuss and palava is due to just one game...

"[iI think what the club are saying is that we aren't going to change after just one game, we're not going to do it because we've had a really ugly day at the office. Those days at Cas are never down to one thing.[/i"

Might we do it if we'd had a really poor season, and a general decline in skills, ability and attitude across the team, maybe?

He goes on to suggest that it wasn't so much us who were bad, instead it was Cas who were very good.

"[iThey are usually a combination of a few things and the biggest factor was that Cas were white hot, although we shouldn't be conceding 66 points.[/i"

Perhaps, but GH needs to recognise that McDermott's record is of rendering a club a lot weaker than the promising setup it was when he started.

He took over at London when they'd previously finished 6th (play-offs) and 7th, coached them to 9th, 9th again, followed by 11th and finished off coaching them to 13th... a position they couldn't recover from.

It is to be hoped he doesn't lead Leeds to a similar fate if he's allowed to stick around.

Some very good points a lot of which i would agree with.The point stands though and I still think we are more in a 95-97 position now as opposed to an early 2000 scenario as some on here seem to think we find ourselves with a quick rebuild and back to business as usual. For me, we are a few years off a full recovery and that's if those at the top accept quickly that things need sorting out properly top to bottom again rather than trying to put lipstick on a pig and sending us further into the doldrums.

I should have worded my response more clearly.

My reference to the 95/97 position not being clear cut was to highlight the advantages available to Caddick/GH when they took over back then which were...

1) Rich legacy of Laughton & Bell Re: academy products.
2) Cheap availability of overseas signings who were without a club.
3) A free coach (Graham Murray) paid for by someone else.
4) Far less restrained by a salary cap.
5) Taking the opportunity to asset-strip a promoted club who had been crucified by SL.

I agree we are in a 95/97 position in many respects.

I disagree that we can get out of this mess as easily as we did since 95/97. That's what I was getting at.

Therefore my view is more pessimistic

The lack of opportunity for the quick fix is now structural and policy driven throughout SL. Just ask Koukash for his opinion. Much of this structure and policy is a consequence of CEO's like GH who has argued frequently in favour of the salary cap level, and on occasions even the lowering of it! These conditions worked for the club while ever they remained beneficiaries of their long-term academy products.

Other SL clubs have been roundly criticised over the years for not investing in and getting their academies into shape, instead taking the route of attempting to buy success with signings. Leeds and their fans often being at the forefront of such directed criticism as they paraded their [i'Best run club, academy and world class sports science facilities in SL'[/i mantra.

It'll be interesting to see how GH modifies his previous policy stance, should those structural policy conditions alluded to above make the path back to the top of SL too difficult to navigate within a reasonably short time frame.

There may not be a quick fix but IF done correctly it shouldn't take too long i.e 2/3yrs before we are challanging again.
That HAS to start with the Coaching set up & also a fresh approach to our conditioning i dont think we look as fit as in previous years.

That's why I said we're a year behind where we should be and I think that's GH's fault more than the coach's but there's clearly lots more happening in the squad this year in preparation for the future, which is good, and hopefully after the next 4 weeks we'll see that activity increased.

And this year's not a write off, yet. Not saying we're going to win anything but there's lots to look forward to.

Your last sentence is exactly how I feel. We are only 4 games in and we've won 2, would I have taken that at the beginning of the seaso? Probably , yes. Cas could easily lose momentum, weren't everyone raving about Widnes this time last season and on the flip side weren't both Wigan and Hull getting slated bu their fans calling for the coaches head?

I am OK with all your points except that last statement. When were Leeds "at the top" before 1997? Surely the "climb back to the top" started some twenty-odd years prior to 1997.

Fair point, if you are talking purely on silverware, but the Laughton era Leeds that went before 1996 provided some great entertainment sadly couldn't quite scale the mountain which was the Awesome Wigan team, but i would still say we were competing at the top table if nothing else.