Unfortunately most of the threads come back to R.S because most people see him as the main problem, although certainly not the only one .

i have already made my explanation on Bentley so i will not go over that again .

It is not the league position most are on about , it is the performances and style of play that concerns us .

We need in my opinion (quality) a Full back , a centre , a winger , a scrum half , a prop and a strong running tall 2nd rower to get up to the likes of Wigan , Saints and Hull K.R . That's more than than your two additions and a 37 year old , who would I release ? Miller , Fuz , mom , Frawley , our two French imports and Donaldson . Now before you say it I know it is not that easy as most are on contract but maybe our president could have sorted it out instead of bank rolling Hull.

Oh and we need to retain Handley and Martin .

Nice to see you back Chris after our wins against the bottom two .

100%. Handley is fast becoming the player we all hoped he would whilst Martin is, for me, the best value for money overseas players in the comp. Versatile, team player, superb attitude, skillful, availability and he kicks.

I’d not left, just not really bothered about posting anymore, every thread seems to be or turns out the same. It’s tedious and waste of time which I don’t have a load of spare at the moment.

I think if we were top of the league, our style of play wouldn't be up for debate so much. I'm still saying that whatever style of play we want to execute, we can't do it off the back of such a high error count. Style of play is also heavily informed by the players you have: example Croft. He's been worth 1-2 tries every game with assists/kicks through at the line etc.

Ironically this is one of my criticisms of Smith, I'm not convinced he is playing a style which suits the players we actually have, it's like he's trying to force them into what he sees. The problem is that lightweight backs make your yardage carries garbage and puts the whole side under pressure. Or lightweight forwards... I get he is trying to distribute the energy drain more evenly across the side but it doesn't work when we're getting hammered early in sets and then pushed into miracle rugby.

As for replacing six players, that's a bold call. I get where you're coming from but is that practical? You'd sign 6 really high quality players from where? And on usually minimum 2-3 year contracts, what about the risk of losing some of our better juniors whose paths are now blocked? Donaldson is done, Fus is most likely joining him, Martin will weigh up his options. Frawley, we'll see. I'd be amazed if Miller or Mom leaves early. I think a Hall +2 scenario is more likely.

This is probably where we differ at heart: I'm an evolutionary kindof guy, you're more a revolutionist.

If Rhinos had not caved in against Giants the other week (by the way no excuses for this but almost every team if not all are capable of such a result). We would be joint top of the league. We would still have an horrendous injury issue and we would still have a boat load of whiners on this site!
Are we a good side? Certainly not but we are far better than last season when every time we played a bottom two or three side we lost.
What I am trying to say is we are not a top team but we are by no means as bad as some on here would suggest.

This 2 points off the top of the league - we're going pretty well etc etc is misleading. Apart from Catalan (who let us off the hook with drop ball on our line time and again) we've lost against every good side we've played and we're out of the cup. We were abysmal against Hull and totally capitulated against Huddersfield, got out of jail against Cas who were awful and very average against London just to name a few. Our stats are dreadful in attack and defence and we're only one win better than last season at this stage.

now if we do something in these next 2 then yes i'd absolutely agree we're going in the right direction and it's not as bad as it seems but at present there's little signs of progress from last year. very little.

Bentley's appearance ratio is not "very similar" to Fusitu'a - although not great its almost 50% higher. He's played 45 games compared to Fustiu'a 32 since they debuted in the same game in 2022. I wouldn't have re-signed him simply because I think we need more size, and he can be a bit of a liability at times. If you're going to use stats to prove a point, it helps to get them right....

Standard.

As the actual figure is more like 40% higher, I could equally say "almost" 30%. If you're going to be stats police, be more mindful of your own biases in presenting figures?

Having said the above, Bentley does have a better appearance ratio on these numbers which is fair enough. However his combination of suspensions, dismissals, injuries over the time he's been with us hardly represents good value for money does it? He's also too small. Fus is a better player than Bentley - and when we re-signed Fus we had less depth at wing, compared to lots of depth in the back row when we re-signed Bentley.

You could make a case that neither player should have been retained, although hindsight is a wonderful thing.

Touche. A bit, although I was closer than you! I too wouldn't have re-signed Bentley. We seem to end up with too many forwards with no go forward, either because they're too small or because they just stop when they get tackled. After McDonnell's performances last year I saw little point in keeping Bentley, and even less in keeping Donaldson. Far better to have gone for a single bigger and more dynamic forward than keep those two IMO.

Resigning Fusitua and Bentley were both stupid decisions, was obvious at the time, how anyone thought otherwise astounds me

Well, looks like one of those two is going, and I wouldn't expect Bentley to get renewed again either next year unless he really pulls various fingers out.

Hear your concerns about development Matts but I remain pretty confident about some of our juniors coming through over the next few years. There are some in first grade now who'll be looking over their shoulders soon.