I believe I have made my feelings clear.

Like I pointed out a few pages ago, the Sinfield headbutt came about from a broken field play that we worked so well to avoid on Saturday.

As good a gameplan as any of the final victories we've managed in the last 10 years IMO, even if it wasn't the prettiest.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder........I thought the first half was pretty damn near perfection.......which is true beauty

I think most people would like to see the attacking moves from the last SL game and the result from the CC final. You cannot have everything - the point was to win the game and that is what Leeds did.

Personally I want to see elite players showing off their sublime skills to the maximum, I want to come away from a game genuinely awe-struck with some of the skills on show. Seeing a Watkins at full throttle swerving past a defender at full pace is more my thing than kicking the ball 15 metres into touch on the last play. It is all a question of taste and circumstance.

Leeds recovered from a slow start in the '99 final and took the lead on half-time before conceding the first try in the second half. Leeds were not afraid to go out and play in order to win that game despite the twenty one year wait - a fact reflected in the final scoreline.

After Castleford also scored first in the second half how long did Leeds keep them in the game with their own negative play on attack. How many times have teams lost games in the past that they were dominating and leading in simply because they stopped trying to score more points themselves?

Putting in an attacking kick with a co-ordinated chase could have resulted in a Castleford error or another 'McGuire try' - banging it into touch on the last merely turned the possession over without any threat to the Castleford line. Maybe it was Leeds who needed the rest because of their ageing pack and the coach's legendary underuse of the bench. Anyone seeing Peacock around the thirty minute mark must wonder what he has to do to get a rest or was it another case of him refusing to leave the field?

Leeds won a game they dominated for huge stretches (and as stated already for this group on this day the result is all that mattered and I've not said otherwise) but they only found daylight relatively late and as per usual it came courtesy of an exceptional individual effort.

Is Hall coached to beat four men to score or is it just something that he is (almost uniquely) capable of?

Admittedly it takes a special player to do that, but the repeated probing down the Cas right hand side in the first half probably led to a somewhat weary defence by the time Hall crashed through it.

^^^^^^^^^^^

What did I say

To try and compare 1999 and 2014 is desperate and foolish.

What Castleford have shown this year is more than the London team of 1999 did which achieved more losses than wins. Had Sneyd or Finn floated a pass out wide that Briscoe could intercept for a 90m try just like Rivett did then we could hold some weight to your argument.

I don't recall many of the Leeds tries in the 2nd half in 1999 being the result of last tackle options......but grasp if you must. I doubt the Leeds team of 1999 would've scored 50 if they'd have faced the Cas side of 2014.

Can't believe the tactics are being criticized after we WON. Fair enough had we lost but in reality it's not about how you win, that doesn't go down in the history books the score does

No need to apologise as I also enjoyed the result and as intimated already no-one will care how it was achieved only that it was achieved and I'm no different to everyone else in that regard.

The spectacle of League will not be improved by employing negative tactics such as deliberately kicking the ball off the field when in attacking positions and is a tactic best left to others who perhaps 'play their rugby elsewhere' as Bill McLaren used to inform BBC viewers and I trust and hope it's a one-off used only in the exceptional circumstances that the Leeds legendary core group found themselves in on Saturday.

I don't know why the tactics are being criticised or are somehow thought to be dull or boring.

They're no more boring than the tactics any other team has used this year.

Some people, probably because Dave Woods kept saying during commentary that it "wasn't a classic", also seem to think it was a boring game.
Far from it. It was quick and both sides passed the ball out wide.

I sometimes wonder what some people are actually watching because it can't have been the game of rugby that actually took place.

I wouldn't say the tactics were boring (is a kick to touch more or less boring than a kick into the in-goal) but they were negative, and they were negative for a reason. As people have already said, it stopped Cas doing what they did best.

I've no complaints about the tactic and it was implemented perfectly. The group of players clearly desperately wanted to win and didn't press home their advantage in the second half in case it somehow risked letting Cas back in the game.

Personally, I thought kicking to touch when in the Cas 30 was taking it too far. Think we put in 4 attacking kicks in those circumstances: the one bomb to Dorn which was a McGuire try, one to Dixon which he messed up but Cas came away with the ball (5 yards from their line, just as they would have if we'd put it to touch), and two improvised McGuire grubbers each of which led to repeat sets from which we scored. But there were also half-a-dozen times in the Cas 30 where we rifled the ball dead or into touch. Not from within our own half, but from attacking positions.

We could have pressed home our advantage with more attacking kicks when deep in Cas territory and where the danger of returns was low. Judging from how things went when we actually did put in those kicks we'd have scored a lot more points than 23, but I think in the second half the understandable ultra-conservative mentality born of many CC defeats led our players to concentrate on making absolutely sure Cas didn't score and were always starting their sets 90 yards out, rather than being massively interested scoring ourselves.

Like I said - end justifies means and no complaints, but anticipate we'll play things a bit differently over next few weeks.

There is skill on both sides of the game, and the speed and aggression of the defensive line was a joy to behold.

Leeds tactic of the day was to back their defense to hold case away from their line. The two tries came from a double repeat set which was initiated from a penalty, the one from a blatent forward pass on half way.
Whilst the score kept me nervous, Cas rarely threatened our line

Constantly battling away from their line meant that mistakes handed us the positions to score from.

Kicking the ball into touch gave the forwards the 20 seconds to catch their breath they needed to really get into the cas players.

There are many ways to skin a cas, and we did it perfectly

What is being commented on is the tactic of deliberately kicking the ball into touch when in attacking positions, which I would personally define as anything within say 35 to 40 metres of the opponent's try-line. Leeds either did/or attempted to do this on two or perhaps three occasions in the third quarter on Saturday. It appeared an attempt to protect the first half lead rather than to protect and to build upon it. If so it failed as during this period Castleford reduced the Leeds lead to a single converted try. Indeed the Castleford score in this quarter incidentally followed a failed Sinfield attempt to bounce the ball into touch while in an attacking position on the last. Leeds' needless negative approach got what it deserved and was all the more disappointing as the previous Leeds kick was much more effective as it pinned an isolated Dorn four metres from his own line.



The only person I recall employing that particular term was someone speaking in favour of the negative tactic employed by Leeds on the last on occasions and a couple of others wishing to represent (mis-represent?) what others are saying.



I'm not saying this about you but more generally I only really wonder these days why people aren't willing to engage in discussions about the actual incidents within a game in a respectful manner without resorting to either playground insults or the often inappropriate use of smileys (or both) no doubt intended to demean the honestly held views of another poster - where I hope it's still recognised they only actually demean themselves when doing so.

Had Leeds managed to win a couple of their previous CC finals, I'm sure they would have been more willing to chance their arm against Cas. Not winning the cup was a huge monkey on the collective backs of more than half the team, and I think in the circumstances a 'safety first' gameplan made sense.

As others have said the 2004 GF was a relatively dour affair as well, especially for a team that had generally been renowned for scoring lots of tries. The 2009 GF was a really dull affair as well.

Sometimes finals work out that way. In fact absolute 'classic' matches in finals aren't that common from memory (....prepares for list of great games). For every Hull-Wigan 1985 there's a Hull-Wigan 2013.

Thought it was a great result and tactically very astute with a well executed 'game plan' there for all to see. Some people described our approach as 'ruthless' and I think, for all the reasons we know well, that it was indeed a ruthless/clinical/professional sustained performance.

I also share TVOCs view that it was not particularly a brand of football I would want to see week in week out, to be honest in the cold light of day with the emotion stripped out it was rather dull stuff.

Of course this raises issues about why any of us go to see any competitive sport (to win trophies or to be entertained) of course the best teams can and do do both. In the long run I really want to go to see professional RL and Leeds in particular to be entertained but occasionally I am happy to forgoe high entertainment for a ruthless but somewhat dull trophy winning performance. Obviously losing game after game whilst trying to play sublime football all the time becomes frustrating and not particularly entertaining!

SO I would argue for a balance of efficiency and entertainment and if occasionally we have to deliver a less than thrilling performance to 'get the job done' I can live with that!! What I can't live with is low levels of entertainment throughout the season with a focus solely on winning the end of season knockout tournament by playing the way we did at Wembley.