I assume it was Ian Kirke. If so, why would anybody show any surprise at such a statistic?

However, let me defend him here. We spilled so much possession that he may have an excuse for a low hit up rate. I'll defend him further by questioning the validity of that stat because I saw him make one carry, albeit he did knock the ball on so perhaps that doesn't constitute a "carry".

No, I can't go on defending him. Even with all that it wouldn't surprise me to see him hide from the ball.

And you cannot criticise McDermott solely. Kirke must have had photos of Mclennan and Smith before him. I remain baffled at his continual selection given his lack of bottle but I tired of beating that drum some time ago and am now resigned to watching his "contribution each" week as his fellow professionals carry him to glory.

I have no desire to knit fog today.

People have read your opinions on this squad of players. They can make their own minds up.

They could yes. Not sure some are capable though with the "their own" bit

I can only remember Brough making one actual break and eluding players and thats when Vickery finaly dropped back to protect the sideline and Brough ran it. Apart from that our line speed was good and the tries they scored through the hands came from good vision and an offload here and there.

As for me saying I thought we matched them elsewhere apart from the score, the stats this morning back me up

Metres:
Lee - 1058
Hudd - 932

Carries:
Lee - 184
Hudd - 186

MPC:
Lee - 5.75
Hudd - 5.01

Offloads:
Lee - 7
Hudd - 10

Tackles:
Lee - 308
Hudd - 271

Missed:
Lee - 27
Hudd - 20

Tackle %:
Lee - 92
Hudd - 93

Penalties:
Leeds - 7
Hudd - 8

Breaks:
Lee - 5
Hudd - 6

Errors:
Lee - 21
Hudd - 12

Like I said before the stats even came out, I didnt see a whole lot of difference across the pitch between the teams apart from errors and their kicking game that set up 4 out of the 6 they scored.

And yes, it was at HT I posted about Brown. How sky gave him the MOM is beyond me after the 2nd half performance.

Oh the Irony.

FWIW I agree completely. I though our defence was excellent first half. We really fired into them, especially Crabtree.

I hoped that our completion rate would impove 2nd half but it didn't and the tries were bound to come late on given the turnovers.

The kicking game was excellent but we didn't have our full back. Kallum is a talent no doubt but his positioning was poor, as one might expect from someone so inexperienced at the position.

2 of the stats you quoted we were better

1 was the missed tackles and I have since added tackle efficiency which there is a difference of 1%. The other is the error count, which I said originally was the reason we lost. My point originally was that with ball in hand, and defensively, ie line speed/tackling, there wasnt much difference at all and there wasnt. They scored 3 tries off of errors from kicks and 1 from a great kick to the corner where Vickery decided to run in 20 metres. The other 2 tries were well worked.

The difference is I share a negative opinion of Kirke that is reinforced by his performances.

You give a negative opinion of, say, Burrow, who proves you wrong by winning a Harry Sunderland award or JJB who proves you wrong by winning player of the year, for example.

In other words, I know what I am talking about and you don't. It's fairly self evident.

did anyone really think there wouldn't be a blip soon after 2 tough games? if it wasn't friday it would have been next week

We had enough ball near their line to at least score 1, their defense was very solid and our attack was too disjointed even when we did manage to hold on to the ball for 6 tackles.

I think you can have a blip without been as dire as we were tbh mate it was on par with anything we've seen bad in the last decade imo.