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.