Gotcha has his di-ck in his hand over that prospect.

I suspect the leeds management focus for the next couple of years will be off field rather than on field activities. We are having to find funding for the southstand and I can see player and coaching staff recruitment and retention being sacrificed and done on the cheap for 2 or 3 years at least while money is diverted away from the team.

Leeds are guaranteed a franchise and with no relegation to drive on field standards, a fallow period (probably outside the top

seems to be the plan. (this is one of the drawbacks of the licence system as it allows failure to be tolerated without consequence)

Expect extensions to current playing staff contracts regardless of form or attitude. McDermott is clearly the cheapest coaching option in the league and that will probably be the determining factor in him retaining his job. GHs attitude is clearly we have had a good run (back to back to back is unprecedented after all) and that a period of under-performance wont drop crowds too far to affect the bottom line- hell we turned up in numbers for 30 barren years!

This in my opinion is sporting and commercial suicide. He only has to look 15 miles away to odsal to see how much damage keeping a coach who is way out his depth in the job, long after anyone with any sense can see he is not up to it will do. I'd love to see Murray back even if its just to sort out this season but commercially I just cant see it.

With an 11MGBP turnover, Leeds will never spend much below the SC...

the idea that the funding of the southstand will affect recruitment is a nonsense imo. Regardless of anything else in the scheme of a £10million pound investment our entire playing budget represents less than 2%, any cut in the playing budget would be a maximum of about £200k (we arent going to go into a season spending less than £1.4m on the cap), which represents 0.2% of that investment, a drop in the ocean. I find it hard to believe GH is sacrificing the possibility of on the field success to find 0.2% of the money to finance the southstand especially considering that at least part of that saving will be lost in lower attendances, lack of prize money, lower merchandise sales etc.

On the coaching side of things, its difficult. McDermott probably deserved his chance, injuries and poor form have probably exacerbated his short-comings and Im loathed to write him off after 10 games, but I struggle to think of a coach who has ever turned around a situation like this. We also have to bear in mind the disruption the upheaval of changing coach mid season and the damage that in itself would do.

Plus we have to ask who we can get, its all very well clamouring for Murray, but would he be prepared to travel half way around the world for half a season? Would he want longer? If he did would he be the right appointment for the next 3 years? What about Noble? His pedigree is unquestioned. We all know he can get a first team playing well. Would he be so bad if he was only given control of the first team with someone else taking responsibility for everything else? Would he be happy with the end of the season? would he want 2 or 3 years?

Also, we need to bear in mind in Australia there is a bit of a merry-go-round going on at the moment in coaching, maybe it is better for us to bide our time and get the right man, see who will be available at the end of the year in a month or two and get the right man for next year, rather than acting now and getting who is available rather than who is right.

Not just INTO Europe but dominated the European Cup for two years !

maybe the decision has already been made,after all a new coach would want an say in recruiting for the following season,either McD is staying, or the new coach is already in place and making decions behind the scenes

Absolutely.

Absolutely right - people who say that seem to be just trying to find some logic or blame at the top in the sometimes seemingly random cycles of sporting success.

Personally, I think sacking McDermott now is not something which should be considered and we'll see where we are at the end of the season. We have (or most of us have) got into the habit of overlooking early season form with the expectation of us suddenly "turning up" in the playoffs. Indeed, the repeated woefulness of Bluey's teams for huge chunks of seasons (and indeed Smith's in much of 2006 and 2007) seems to be being forgotten. Not to say that is right or wrong and I wouldn't suggest we are on the right track now but I think the same standard should apply to Brian Mac: no matter how awful it seems today, it's August to October that matters.

However, all that said, if it were to be the case that we were looking for replacements then we need to decide what position we are in and where we want to go. If we were to consider bringing someone in mid-season for 6 months then IMO we may as well just let BM finish off what he has started. So we may be looking for a permanent replacement. With the greatest respect to Graham Murray, who I admire massively, he did very little in terms of bringing young players in or on - he was very effective instead at getting more than (much more than) the sum of the parts he had available to him in the form of a group of mostly quite old players, a team which by necessity had to be dismantled shortly after he left.

That is sort of the position we are in now, but are we looking to transition to a new team, or try and hold course with the core we have for a while longer? Tricky. Noble I would say is similar to Murray in some respects but also more inherently objectionable.

It is my belief that McDermott wont turn it around but he probably does deserve a bit more time. If we dont win at least 3 out of the next 5 and 7 out of the next 10. Then things will probably come to a head.

I would say both Noble and Murray would get more out of this side than McDermott is. But is succession planning part of their skillset?

I wouldnt be averse to seeing either come in on a short-term basis until the end of the season.

Next season (if McDermott doesnt turn it around) maybe Matty Elliott would be the place to look.

For the love of God NO!

Who else is there? John Lang is 60, probably not the age to uproot half way around the world. Elliot will likely be replaced by Nathan Brown at the end of the year so he will be available. Wouldnt want Daniel Anderson and I doubt he would come back. Powell has had his shot.

There doesnt seem to be a whole heap of peope available, Wigan are likely to stick with Wane, Salford barely have a coach at the moment.

The overly-influential Sinfield may get his wish earlier than expected.

On the positive side, that ought to see a welcome end to his overly-ineffective international career.

Duncan - Leeds will never be in danger of breaching the cap - I would suspect 1.4/5m is the max GH will ever spend.

To run a premiership RU side is expensive - even with the quality of players Leeds have - that is not possible out of the pure RU revenue streams the money has to come from somewhere.

Lang would be my choice, with a younger British assistant coach who could be groomed to take over in 2 to 3 years.

Neither of the current two are that younger British assistant by the way. Maybe someone like Harris if he would be willing?

What is the TV income for a Prem RU team by comparison to the squad spend?

Lang has had the best squad Souths have had in years and he has taken them backwards - we need another Maguire - a quality assistant from the NRL who is able to shows the ageing core players who is the boss.

I didn't make myself very clear did I. What I meant was that Leeds will never spend up to the cap, but they will never spend way way beneath it either. GH is frugal, but not daft enough to think that by spending say 250k below the cap he would have a squad strong enough to be real contenders.

If I were a betting man, I'd say that every year we are between 30 and 70k under the cap limit.

Significantly less about 1m a year - plus they have much bigger squads to support given the specific skills required for certain positions.

So who do you suggest? Incidentally we really missed the boat with Furner IMO.

I think GH will spend as little as he can to ensure the profitability of the club - no bad thing in principle. Unfortunately, like in any business, when you stop investing only one thing will happen? and it isn't positive.

Caddick subsidises them personally and it's widely known they don't spend up to the RU salary cap. Only a conspiracy-theorizing loon would think their playing budget is topped up directly from the Rhinos' playing budget. Leeds RL certainly subsidise them in other ways, but as the biggest club in RL Leeds could and would spend plenty more on the squad if they were allowed to (being allowed to would mean they were in fact obliged to spend more). They'll be a little under the cap in normal circumstances I imagine; and this year I can't recall the exact sequence of Diskin/Donald/Cross/Hauraki movements so he could be keeping some more up that sleeve. But these would be in the tens not hundreds of thousands.

Hetherington though likes the salary cap as it is because it keeps costs down. But don't be fooled that pretty much top of his priority list is ensuring a successful Leeds Rhinos team. Since you're obsessed with his obsession with money, it's worth remembering that more than anything else at Headingley it's that which makes the real profits.

Possibly, although the Raiders are going well. Furner is lucky his dad runs the club so I think his position is pretty secure. He would make a great coach IMO - I still think there is some legs in Steven Kearney, who only just missed out to McClennan last time around.

The obvious place to look is Melbourne, Bellamy is the best coach in the world and his protege's seem to learn a lot from working with - not least who is the boss, something sadly lacking at Headingley

The RU Salary Cap is £4M per year, whilst the TV income from the last deal was £54M over 3 years, equating to £18M per year. I don't know the details of the split between the Prem clubs and a parachute payment, but it's conservatively 1.5M per year between 12 clubs.

That leaves quite a gap that has previously been filled by Paul Caddick personally as documented many times. I don't expect that with the playing squad that Carnegie have they are spending anything like 4M, even given the larger squad to cover more specialist skills as you point out.

The point is Leeds is a very small enterprise in the real world 11m is tiny in comparison to normal commercial enterprise - it would interesting to compare the revenue streams of the two main sporting clubs in Leeds - that might actually put things into perspective for you.

The club doesn't have a finite cashflow, Caddick will guarantee the O/D, loans etc but if he were putting money into the Tykes you would expect to see the director's loans on the increase that is not visible on the balance sheet - so I would suggest quite the contrary.

If they have a to support a RU squad with limited funds - Leeds profits are not in the millions - something has to give. What else would you suggest is their next biggest expenditure? You are nieve if you think the success of the two sides are not financially linked. The sacking of the director of rugby suggests the club isn't quite as flush as some on here would suggest.

Kearney is at Parramatta. No chance of him quitting to come here.

David Kidwell and Kevin Walters are Bellamys assistants. Kidwell is nowhere near ready. Walters took Les Catalans backwards at a rate of knots.