I disagree, he's running much better lines, and as long as it's not with Richie Myler he is much more effective in the tackle.

I agree that having better players around him is helping that, but most of it is down to the application of the player and the fine detail coaching he is receiving.

Come on, Hurrell's well into his 30s with a long NRL career behind him. He had all the skills before he joined Leeds or Sts. The only 'coaching' he needed was to be told to play with more discipline. Playing among better players in a team with a clear structure to their play does the rest.

I disagree - When Smith came to Leeds in 2004 the first thing he did was work the basics of catch and pass, PTB. He coached as if he were coaching kids.

Players get into bad habits even professionals - Hurrell carried the ball in a terrible position which result in numerous errors between the tackle and the PTB. Saints have definitely improved that area of his game. He also used to shoot out of the line all the time and create mayhem - this is much improved at Saints.

It could be he knows the level of performance tolerated at Leeds would not be acceptable at Saints so he had to take heed of the coaching or not play?

Agree Batley. Recruitment has been simply awful and we are still paying the price. Depressing times

He was fatigued at Leeds ++ as he was doing the work of two players. He’s fresh and selective now, so less errors. They can even afford to test him, and allow proper recovery from injury….!

He was carrying the weight of two players - by his own admission he wasn't as fit as he should have been. Perhaps if he had of been his propensity to injury would have been significantly reduced.

You could argue, has Hetherington ever been THAT savvy?

In the early years, you couldn’t really miss with overseas recruitment, with the exchange rate and the NRL-SL salary cap ratio.

Circa 98/99 was a short-term team, then the emergence of the golden generation which was circumstance rather than directly due to decision making. From there, they formed the basis of most success since.

There were good decisions which facilitated success. Smith, Bluey, and McDermott were perfect coaches for the golden generation at the respective times. Hetherington really peaked there. Though, you could argue beyond Smith any competent coach would have won with the spine that was there.

By and large though, I think player recruitment has been poor since circa 2010, and it was the golden generation spine that papered over the cracks for so long. That’s why it dropped off so fast when they excited.

Is there anyone else apart from the pension top up pot man himself expect any different with a spine of Handley Austin Sezer/Myler and O',Connor plus waste of spacers Fussy Roberts Olpherts Bentley Lisone Donaldson. This crap isn't ending any time soon.

I think it could be turned around quite quickly actually. This season is gone, but IF we get recruitment right we have the first chance in years to massively upgrade the team in key positions. We can replace the two worst marquee players in the competition (Tetevano and Fusitu'a) with genuine quality, and have overseas spots and other cap leaving as well. Combine that with what looks like real quality juniors coming through and we could be very competitive next year and beyond.

Get it wrong and we'll be plodding along for the next three or four years.

I just don't have much confidence we'll get it right.

I'm not convinced we'll be blown away by any recruitment just don't see the players available or that we'd be a quality players first choice. Probably cust being moved on from wigan and ending up at leeds.

I presume the last sentence was a sarcastic one

I hope so.
Cust is garbage.

Cust 6 Sezer 7

George Riley told me. Or it could have been Rachel Riley, I can't remember.

There’s a lot riding on the Huddersfield game for GH. Many are now deciding if RS is the right person to take us forward, but if we lose (and perhaps more importantly if we don’t change how we play) we will see people start to turn on GH and he won’t like that.

Expect to see some changes after Huddersfield if the rot doesn’t stop.