We'd be making progress of sorts if that did happen. Far too few of our prospects push on in a meaningful way, either with us or elsewhere.

Sinfield will have to be really good at passing, kicking and leading the team around to make up for his lack of speed and size. Having said that, we've all seen plenty of half backs who star as juniors because they're quick who fail to kick on because that's all they've got.

It seems like the juniors coming through are significantly better as a group than for a long time, at least in the backs. But our development has been really poor for years. Most of the home grown regulars came through years ago - Handley, Holroyd, Newman, Oledzki, Smith all debuted 2018 or earlier. Of the current side the only regular to come through after that is O'Connor.

If you don't enjoy it any more then stopping going makes sense. Feeling the need to tell the world about it in this way on here may make some question your motives.

But the world moves on. For me my favourite aspect of the club's great years were lingering memories of the struggles before - such as 86 and 96. It made the difficult times worth it.

Agree with that. We were in the wilderness for a long time from the late 70's ( with a brief 2 year blip) up until 2004. I know we had some decent times during that period, but by and large we got stuffed when it mattered. When Danny took Senior's pass to go over for the winner at Old Trafford it was a moment of deliverance. I hope KR/Wire/Salford/Leigh fans get to have that experience in the coming weeks. I know not everybody has been following the club for the same portion of time, but if you started supporting Leeds from mid noughties on I would humbly submit that your sense of perspective and entitlement is inevitably skewed. I appreciate people have different and very valid reasons for packing it in, but I'll continue to wait for the next moment of deliverance. I don't think it will be 30 odd years this time.

I started watching in 1981, and was at Wigan when we won the JPT in 1984. The next win was the Yorkshire Cup 1988. After that more than a decade to the Challenge Cup 1999. It took 18 years to win a major trophy, so I'm pretty tolerant of barren spells.

But I have more sense now of how to build a decent team, and it really frustrates me to see how badly the team has been run since the end of the Goldens. Watching the team fall apart has been like watching a slow motion car wreck, with warning signs even before 2015.

On the plus side it feels that Blease is laser focused on getting us back to the top, and I'm confident Arthur will leave the club in a better state than when he arrived. The downside is it feels like we're 2-3 years away from really competing and Arthur is unlikely to be here to steer us there. I can live with that but I do understand if some have reached the end of their tether for now. Hopefully green shoots of long term recovery and they'll be back.

Yep. I was there at the JP, last hurrah for the likes of Holmes, Dick and co. I'm probably more optimistic than you, in that I believe we've been fighting with the equivalent of two broken hands (due to our criminal lack of props) for the most part of the decade. I believe Arthur and Blease will sort that this year, and as result the rest of the team will improve exponentially. Not saying we'll be champions but we can stop being also rans in 25. If Salford and Leigh can compete with their lack of infrastructure there is no reason to think that we can't rise again very quickly.

This year has been extremely frustrating, I do believe Blease and Arthur will fix some of the issues in the off season.

Don't know if this is a reflection of the quality of the league but there are 3 games that stick out for me, Huddersfield at home, Hull KR at home and Salford away, I still believe that we 'should' have won those with just a bit more composure. That would have had us finishing 4th, and in fact any other year finishing on 28 points as we have would have got us in the playoffs.

As I say that might be a reflection of the quality of the league.

What I would like to see next season is starting off well, getting some decent wins early on can pay dividends later on in the year, I'm usually one for saying its a long season and your start doesn't reflect your finish, but I'm ditching that philosophy next year, we need to start with some momentum so we aren't chasing points at the back end and it will also get the fans back on board.

I'm still not over Huddersfield at home. From that point on I'd lost faith in Smith. The thumping from an understrength Wire shortly after confirmed it. Agree with your sentiments re KR and Salford, but you also have to factor in our two daylight robberies against London.

Agree with this. The Huddersfield at home game defeat was really inexplicable, we (twice?) built leads that should have been enough to grind out a win.

The London games were poor too, for far too long Leeds seem to more often than not be brought down to the level of the opposition. It seems like an attitudinal thing but for professional sportsmen we let this happen far too often. We've seen it happen under Arthur and Smith, but this lack of ruthlessness during the regular season arguably goes back to Brian Mac's days or even earlier. Is it a culture thing, or just chronic mis-investment in playing staff?

And he came from Widnes!!

We used to delight in the fact that the team peaked for the latter part of the season and didn't always perform during the regular season.
Now that is being described as a problem.

We didn’t perform during the season or peak at the end of the season. That's the problem.