Spot on. Which is where a coach can make a difference. Forget comparing players etc.

Except the players Murray inherited already had a good attitude - a basic prerequisite for most professional RL players. I'd imagine even Furner expected this before he arrived. What Murray added was a new style of play built on aggressive defence. I don't think our current squad (again) possesses players with these attributes, especially in the forwards.

Any discussion of the team's current plight that doesn't involve looking at the players is short-sighted, impressionistic, and ignores the bulk of the evidence available to us.

The coach is not a magician, nor is he the person making mistakes on the field. Letting Furner go now after such a short period of time in charge is not the Leeds way IMO.

So it begs the question - what is the point of a coach? If you have a good enough set of players with the correct skill set and attitude the coach has very limited influence. A good coach must add some value and the very least he can add is: a team as fit as appropriate and with the correct attitude. Murray's teams both had those qualities. Murray had a few plodders too: Cummins, Hay, Lawford, Kemp, Sheridan etc

Indeed

Murray improved players and instilled a good team ethic. I dispute some of your player analysis though. Cummins was still a decent winger under Murray, and Hay was a destructive wide-running second-row and got selected for England/GB. Kemp was more of a Dean Bell era player and had left before our 1999 CC cup win (I thought he had everything apart from pace!). Sheridan was a solid scrum-half, and instrumental in the cup semi-final win against the Bulls. The deficiencies of Hay and Sheridan weren't really exposed until Daryl Powell was instilled as coach a few years later. Dean Lawford I'll give you, but he was hardly a regular member of the starting 13.

Dean Lance gets a lot of stick on here, but despite losing runs at the beginning and end of his tenure he did oversee a record winning run of something like 13 consecutive games, and take us to a CC final.

Daryl Powell is an interesting one. His Leeds record isn't great, but he is credited with laying the foundations for the 'Golden Generation' to come through. He's obviously a better coach now but he just couldn't beat the Bulls in 2003, despite 5 attempts. Tony Smith took this team (plus Bai and Lauitiiti) to real success, but he wasn't good at maintaining that success over four seasons until after his departure had been announced in 2007.

Both Brian McClennan and McDermott seemed to focus on getting an established group of top players to perform when it mattered. But even then the flow of quality younger players who made it started to dry up. Eventually the Golden Generation started to retire or leave, they were not replaced like-for-like with quality, and we are where we are - Leeds are having to revert to the old policy of big money signings to turn things around.

So to answer your question, at Leeds at least the role of the coach seems to be to a) blood and nurture young players, b) make quality signings, and c) get seasoned professionals to play their best when it matters. Only occasionally did a coach significantly improve average players - and even then the effects were limited, as Murray's team finished a lowly 5th (or so?) in his final season at Leeds.

The key thing is those players looked their very best in 1998 and 1999. Deficiencies exposed later? Perhaps, or maybe there was something or someone else which brought the very best out of their relatively limited abilities.

Graham Murray is the very best example this club has ever had of a coach coming in and making an impact, turning the average players into good ones, utilising their skills to the best so that the overall team was better.

Tony Smith's impact I feel is similar but obviously different as the players he was working with were superior. But I'd also argue he made them superior, he brought in the good habits and the little things which helped make them winners. And Smith's genius was in letting that team believe they could win. After 2003, that bit of psychological management was so important - given the way the current team plays I wish Furner had something of that about him - they look terrified and panic in defence whenever things start going against them.

Surely winning the cup in 99 the worst thing that happened to the club tho. GH should have sacked Graham Murray on the pitch at Wembley that fine sunny day!!! Lol.

Now that we have a little breathing space between us and London, should we beat them in the magic game and at their place, that would put us 6 points clear of them with (currently) significantly better PD. Should we win only 3 more games other than London ones they would need to win 6 more from what would be 14 games.

I’d say that as long as we beat them twice, we should be fine.

We are not good on plastic

We’re not exactly 3 hot on grass either...

ALLEGEDLY

Just on a new coach turning things around, I'd say in terms of immediacy Maurice Bamford in 1983-84 was more impressive than Murray. We went from a basket case (including record home defeat vs Queensland and sheallackings by Hull and Cas) to going on an 18-game unbeaten run including winning the 1984 John Player Trophy. Mo couldn't sustain it, but he got some players like Ian Wilkinson and the Rayne twins playing the best RL of their careers in a very short period of time.