He is obviously capable of getting players to perform. When he arrived he took a group of underperformng players and got them to overperform to a grand final. Yes the circumstances were very different but he still managed to achieve it.

For some reason things are not clicking yet but they may not be as far away as some seem to think. As difficult as it may be, a little more patience is still needed.

I'm not enjoying see us in this position, not enjoying watching away games on tv or even going to Headingly. We seem to have forgotten that this is Rugby and not football, it takes longer for a team to come together in our game and the football ethos of blaming the coach, sacking and getting a new one does not work particullarly well.
It's not how you start a season, its how you finish. you can win the GF from as low as 6th, that would be a new record for everyone to talk about!

Jim.
You missed the point completely.
Other teams manage to perform with injuries, but on here the first of many excuses is injuries.
Of course injuries affect performances and results.
But the good coaches cope with inferior players and injuries to still get the results.Thats the difference.

Injuries will always impact performance, but those clubs who coach a structure across all teams will find that when a player has to step up into the first team they at least understand the structure they are being asked to play within. One of the reasons we are impacted more than other teams is that we lack this structure and therefore the players coming in are asked to recreate the "hail mary" plays that we seem to use as our version of structure. It's a lot harder for those players to bring impact in that scenario.

The only real gaps in the team vs Hull were in the threequarters, but two of those that played have appeared in all but one game this season, a third has played a lot in the centres, and our debutant was probably the MoM. Utter nonsense to blame that performance on injuries. Over the course of the season we'll have far weaker sides out than that.

injuries
weather
richest
refs
supporters
hetherington


anyone but smith

The abuse directed at Smith is unacceptable, sadly it’s part of modern day society and not just confined to a relatively small section of rugby fans.
He is obviously aware of the disquiet and commented on this in one of todays broadsheet newspapers. Nevertheless the shambles is entirely of his making. It was obvious last season he was out if his depth, confirmed also this season ,also compounded with some poor signings . Unfortunately when he departs he will be leaving us with a deeply flawed team. Hethrington took a huge gamble with Smiths appointment, which has spectacularly failed. When Smith departs the whole of his useless back room staff and so called coaches need to go with him. Not certain what they do in training, darts and domino’s maybe? . Certainly haven’t seen any evidence of any kind of structure or systems in place.

There’s two things really getting on my nerves. All this about the spine taking time to gel. Catalans certainly don’t seem to have that problem despite having completely new halves, and a permanent change at full back.

The second thing is the circle where all the players breath in together after a try. Smith should be sacked for that alone! The most cringy thing I’ve ever seen in my life. Thank goodness we hardly score this season!

Funny how the outrage is about a few fans chanting for Rohan out.

Where's your outrage for our ex NRL scrum half pushing a 19yr old Edgell off a catch and then screaming at him for dropping it?

I doubt he’s going anywhere for the next couple of months. We should win 5 out of the next 7 games which will leave us hovering around the playoff spots. Provided we show an acceptable level of spunk in our defeats to St’s and Catalan and then scrape 5 wins against the bottom 4 teams then this will be deemed acceptable.
We seem to be treading water in the hope that things will eventually click.
Hopefully Frawley will be dropped against London and someone else given a chance. Our other recruits have been reasonable. The young lads haven’t let anyone down this year and deserve more opportunities. It would also be great to see the forwards doing their share of the tough carries early in the tackle counts and laying some kind of platform for Croft to weave his magic.

I realise I'm swimming against the tide even trying to post on this thread, and this forum generally at times.

If you take the 2, 3, 4, 5 out of most sides you'll see a negative impact on how they play, structure or no.

Are we particularly susceptible to this because of how RS coaches? Yes I can see the argument for that.

Also, Riley Lumb came in and basically won the game for us yesterday. I think if Fus was there instead, he wouldn't have scored those two tries. So yep, sometimes injuries work the other way...

Then again, did Smith's lack of "structure" stop Lumb slotting in seamlessly for his MoM performance? Again, some of you want your cake and to eat it too, because you'll take any situation and twist it to your "Smith out" narrative.

Couple of things from me and then I might duck out of at least this thread. 38 pages of moaning and repetition.

Firstly, Smith is clearly on the ropes and I suspect the signing of Frawley in particular might be his undoing. We just didn't have wiggle room for mistakes in signings after last year. Yesterday's game looked a little bit like a relegation battle which nobody wanted to see. Personally I think it's a real shame the way things are going, but it's obvious that he needs to turn this team around over the next month otherwise he might have to be cut mid-season. He has lost a fair chunk of the supporter base for whatever reasons and even a few wins now and I feel like he's on a hiding to nothing with many.

Secondly, whereas I can respect many people's opinion on here about RS, this forum and now the terraces has been overtaken by negativity and criticism ad nauseam. We can all see the club isn't where it should be. I don't know what the easy fix is to that and neither does anyone on here; what I do know is that the behaviour I saw yesterday reflects worse on the club than the performances do.

It's a game. I mean you do you, but flip me there are a LOT of people on this forum who can see clouds to every silver lining.

Not condoning MF, but the level of abuse aimed at RS and the players was much, much more than a few fans chanting.

A one off performance loosing after loosing 2,3,4,5 is one thing but this hs been going on for months now. Even with fully fit sides. Players leave and once again look like good players for their new club. That's down to coaching

I couldn't agree more with KaeruJim's long post.

Re: Frawley, I think there are glimpses of a good player in there, but he's taken on too much responsibility. With Miller suffering a massive nose dive in confidence, the spine need to work better to take the pressure off Frawley in some areas of his game that aren't working out, especially kicking. Frawley's a good defender (much better than Sezer, who had too many high shots in him, not to mention being very injury prone), and he actually breaks the line more than I expected when we signed him - again, we need better communication and support play when we're attacking to make the most of this.

Why what JJB done wrong when was interim coach he improved the team enough to hand it over to smith who made it to the grand final.
Have some respect for a Loyal Servant.

Don’t agree with the abuse directed at Smith, however it’s not unique to Leeds. Daryl Powells last season at Warrington was absolutely shocking. I am certainly not pursuing an anti Smith agenda but if i see rubbish on the field I am certainly going to comment on it. Just check out the available statistics which confirms my opinion we are struggling. On the other side of the coin if Smith turns the situation around I will be on here praising him. I really couldn’t give a tinkers cuss who coaches us, so long as we are reasonably successful. I had hoped for a top four spot this season without winning any silverware. A perfectly reasonable expectation, this club is one of biggest in super league after 3 seasons of Smith fifth or below is not acceptable..