... drop goal opportunities. Something else Leeds proudly sit top of.



You may be right but how do you know this?



Winning penalty counts isn't the be all and end all. So far this season Leeds have 'lost' the counts V Bradford and Hull and 'won' the counts V Harlequins and Warrington. Bit of a disconnect there.

I don't think he was quoting the missed goals as a positive thing tvoc.

I think what he meant is that despite the fact Leeds have squandered more 2 point opportunities than any other team, they have still scored more points than any other team. Which is a fair point. It wasn't the be all and end all of his argument. Just a perfectly valid and legitimate observation.

We've scored more points than anyone else, despite the hindrance of also missing more goals than anyone else.

Well said sir. I'm with you with a half full glass. Amazing how many seem to have a half empty glass.

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Missing the most goal attempts and still being top of the points scored table reinforces my point that attacking wise we look very good despite missing arguably our best creative player.

The penalty count is not everything you are indeed correct but one of the biggest gripes from the previous season was our lack of discipline by conceding less than 8 other teams over the 4 games so far I would suggest it has improved. I haven’t noticed as much chatting back to the ref so far either this year which is another sign of improvement in this area.

Good point.

But you could take this as a positive slant in that this is purely a temporary situation which is sure to improve because we have the best kicker in the competition. A bit like saying we are playing without some of our best players who when they return will have a massive positive effect.

I think what we've learnt from the first 4 games is this new guy we've got at Stand Off isn't as good at goal kicking as that fella who played Loose Forward last season!

All the things that have cost us points so far are easily fixable:

Missed tackles
Tries scored from dummy half
Interception passes thrown

Nowt too serious there that we can't sort.

Another positive is the injured players that will be drip-fed back into the playing 17.

In patches perhaps but without much consistency at the present time. A few late tries when games have been (and one when it should have been) lost have presumably helped that perception. It's also a little early to pay too much attention to such tables where teams could move up or down several positions each week. Let's see how they look around week 13 when everyone has just about played everyone else.



Coach McDermott has a record of producing disciplined teams, unfortunately he also has a record of producing losing teams. Let's just hope the two aren't connected.

Personally I enjoyed Graham Murray's approach of going out to put the opposition off their game and yes occasionally that might involve conceding the odd penalty along the way but it usually paid dividends in the end.

Omething that I noticed at the harlequins game was how deep our half backs were playing, but then the centre wing combo standing quite flat when the ball got to them, I didn't think it worked particulary well.

On the above note regarding tables I don't know why they bother publishing them from the start of the season. Alot of the errors that we are producing can be improved, but we shall see. I thought all the players were saying how in the pre season they were doing alot more work with the ball? It hasn't looked lime it early doors

From the SL website, the stats for Leeds aren't too bad, especially on attack.

We have the most tries, off-loads, clean breaks, drop goals (!), and second most metres made.

OTOH, we have missed the most tackles and made the third most errors, with the second fewest marker tackles.

Can you please explain how that team stat works?

(Hauraki has missed 11 on his own, with the next worst being Leuluai and Sinfield each with 9 to their credit.)

There must be somebody out there who knows.

Agreed.
Im jealous

Isn't it just missed tackles that can't be attributed to a single player?! No proof to this I'm just a guessing! You know, like if a player is running at 3 or 4 of us and slips through. Would the Opta man mark down all 4 players and allocate them a missed tackle each? Or would that not just go down as a "Team Missed Tackle"??