Warrington were pretty good against Leeds. Leeds were dreadful - even given the injuries we had and slightly bizarre team selections. Absolutely without structure at both ends of the field and playing with virtually no fire (legal I mean).

We looked like a badly coached team. There's no other way to describe it. I agree that individual players make mistakes, give away penatlies etc, but IMO that's all part and parcel of a side looking fairly clueless about what its trying to do and how to do it and being frustrated at the way things are going.

A good coach can make a lot of difference to a side. Sadly I donlt think that's what McDermott is.

What has supprised me this year as well I assumed with macs background we at least would be super fit, which doesn't seem the case, we looked to be playing a few speeds down from Warrington all the game.

The biggest blunder for me was the squad selection and missing players who were in form and NOT injured. Playing 2 impact back rowwers from the start and the bizzare interchange times and decisions

Dreadful coaching and dreadfully indisciplined performances notwitstanding, none of that will matter a jot after next week because Leeds will be playing Crusaders (again! yawn), Bradford, Hull KR, Hull FC (twice), Salford, Catalan, Harlequins and Wakefield with only a demanding and testing SL fixture against Wigan sandwiched in-between.

That's the beauty of SL... a team like Leeds can be crap most weeks but it doesn't matter because they aren't tested every week and will still win most games by default.

Leeds will finish 5th at worst.

Leeds will more than likely finish 5th at best too.

Will Leeds beat a team above them in any competition this season?

The table as it stands now I would be happy with 5th and don't agree with you Keith on 5th being the lowest place we can finish.

no

We beat cas when they were above us!!

On the evidence so far this season, not a chance......As an interested neutral, I must admit I was always baffled by the appointment of McDermott. It smacked at the time of a short-term move and from the results so far, its beginning to look like that is how it will end up.

I don't think he's particularly helped by having Jimmy Lowes by his side.....It all looks like small-time novices running a big business.

Get a good coach in, revamp your squad (you have a lot of dead wood at present) and with your support you will be fine.

That remains to be seen. The possibilities are:

St Helens NEUTRAL
Wigan AWAY
CC Semi Final NEUTRAL
Huddersfield AWAY
Week 2 of SL Play Offs AWAY

Next week is a good opportunity. St Helens are ravaged by injuries, despite the fact their fans don't appear to be relentlessly whinging about those circumstances as much as Leeds fans.

Your perception of Leeds current position in the SL pecking order must be lower than mine then.

I don't believe Leeds have quite yet sunk to the low depths of mediocrity inhabited by those who are just making up the numbers. They do appear to have become potential whipping boys against the genuine SL competition however.

It's becoming increasingly obvious that we have the two tier league within SL this season, and Leeds are currently well entrenched in the second tier of the league. I agree that the highest we can finish this season is 5th, and that it's likely that we will, but I can also see us finishing as low as 7th. It's a shame really when you consider where we were only 18 months ago.

We are suffering badly for GH taking his eye off the ball, and he has a lot of work to do now to get us back up to the higher end of SL, starting with putting the right coach in place for the next few years. There is no salary cap for coaching, and Leeds as a club have the highest turnover of any SL club, so we should be able to attract the best coaches in the world. It's time to prove that we have the desire...

Agree fully with the above post. Think we will probably finish 5th but could quite easily drop down further

I'd be very surprised to see Leeds finish lower than 5th. Prior to the Warrington game they won 6 on the bounce against the rubbish despite playing like rubbish themselves. Leeds still have 9 games to play against the rubbish and I cannot envisage them losing more than one of them... or two at worst. That will comfortably see Leeds finish 5th.



I've never been of the opinion that the current coach is the right man for the job. However, some of the influential players at the club whose opinions have clout behind the scenes (including the highly influential skipper) all like him, and until that changes he's here to stay.

If the gates drop, and therefore the income drops, it won't matter a jot what the highly influential skipper (and others) think of the coach. GH will act, as he won't have a choice if he want's to keep the tills ringing.

FWIW, I wouldn't change the coach now, but I would at the end of the season even if I had to "persuade" a club to part with their current coach. Compare the quality of the coaches at Warrington, Wigan and Huddersfield with those at Leeds. Fix that and you are halfway to solving the overall problem. The other half rests with the players.

The odds are yes we should at least once - as every dog has his day, but on current form it is by no means certain.

Having said that we have to recognise that the four current leading teams each have recuited better squads than us on the field. Add to that possibly the four best coaches in SL and you have to ask why would we we expect to beat these four anyway. On paper we still have a strong squad, but the reality on the field is different in that we have dropped below the leaders in player class. Add to that a quite serious injury run extending from last season and still ongoing and it is unrealistic to expect us to finish in the top 4. In sport of course all things are possible but the odds are against a top 4 finish.

So our best plan is to aim to peak for the playoffs where it is knock out rugby where some team will win the GF from 5th at some stage. At times like these you have to be positive. With this in mind I would say the plan is working perfectly so far.... as we have certainly avoided peaking too soon!!! Big Mac's cunning plan?

Joking apart IMO the responsibility should be laid at the door of GH for a failure to recognise and recuit to keep the squad up with the leaders. It was only natural after such a long run of success that some of our players would decline in speed/sharpness/appetite or not recover well enough from injury. The evidence has been there to see on the field for the last 18 months but was obscured for some by the outsanding individual efforts from the likes of McGuire, Sinfield and JP.

So we promote a young British coach with little proven success as head honcho and an assistant coach with a worse cv to take over a team in decline with key players out with long term injury. This situation was made even worse by a spate of further injuries. (one week we had no props available at all) The current top 4 have strengthened their squads intelligently and in the case of Saints had a batch of outstanding youngsters come through.

With this as a background I would say that a finish above 5th spot should be regarded as a success for coach MacD. IMO any of the other top 4 coaches including Tony Smith would not have faired better given the same circumstances.

So we should judge Big Mac at the end of the season and not now. Meanwhile GH should not wait until the end of the season to recuit, as he usually does, because the best players will have been snapped up by then. As I have indicated on my "Taking Stock" thread we should lose 6 possibly 9 out of the cap and recuit at least one quality prop, a quality centre and a quality half back (either SO or SH) and replace the other leavers with younsgters.