I see your Rowley and I'll raise you a Sam Burgess.

Now Im not saying that Wire will go on to win any pots but hes taken a misfiring, spice boys joke of a team and in one preseason moulded them into a very solid, taught team. Their defence is spot on, their attack is crisp and they really look like they are finally moving in the right direction.

1 off season and were what? 2 years in on Rohans Revolution and we still cant string results or performances together?

If Leeds had signed San Burgess as head coach this forum would have gone into meltdown

I think they've been pretty smart in pairing him with Martin Gleeson to be honest, he does the technical coaching and Burgess the motivation/man management.

I think more significant than Marshall is Martin Gleeson. He's been in the England RU set up (shows how respected he is), and was assistant at Salford through their period of success in CC and GF. Great attack coach, who we should have picked up.

The most accurate post on this thread

They also have probably the best half in the competition in George Williams, they hardly have a bad roster.. our England reps are Newman who is rocks and diamonds at Leeds, and possibly Mik who is again pretty much carrying the Leeds pack like the bad old days.

Signing Croft was a step in the right direction but we are still playing catch-up. I'd prefer it if we tried to play overtake.

Jim, Smith has had minimul, if any, involvment with the ID/ recruitment of any of those young players you mention

I get what your saying in regards not leaving us in as bad a state because we have the youth in the system, but the reality is, they would be in the system regardless of Smith.

What we know, is that the current first team is Smiths squad, nearly every one of them has been signed, or re-signed under his watch, so what does a Smith team look like?

We'r not particularly big
We'r not particularly fast
We'r not particularly fit
We'r certainly not intelligent
We'r not particularly resilient

Leeds arnt the only team facing the recruitment challenges you list, all S/L teams are in the same boat, if anything we have advantages over nearly everyone else, but other clubs get it right much more often than we do

I think the current squad has enough fast players (Miller, Handley, Newman, Croft etc)

Fitness, intelligence and resilience have been there if the current first team have struggled to show these things in the last couple of games.

Size is definitely a missing ingredient, especially in association with the other traits mentioned.

Right now we the team needs a) a fresh infusion of confidence as individuals and in teammates, b) whatever it takes to stop all these individual errors, and c) a few extra bodies back in critical positions.

Then we can start talking about buzzwords like identity and DNA. Right now their collective identity is shot to pieces.

when club mouthpiece peter smith starts writing about rifts between coach and players, and players obviously aren't playing for him you know he's a dead man walking.

Missed this is there a link or did you actually mean when?

I've actually got a weird feeling that because the presser hasn't happened yet (I'm led to believe it will happen today) that Smith may actually say he's leaving/standing down before or immediately after the Cas game.

I’m not sure you’re right here. I think we are one of the slower teams overall in the league, and I’d only rate two out of the four above as quantifiably “fast”. We are guessing with both Newman and Miller because we haven’t really seen either in a true foot race this season. I think Harry has slowed down and has a different running style due to all the injuries he’s had, I’m not sure he can burn people with sheer pace like he used to. As for Miller, he’s elusive, but if his broken field running is as fast as it was against London Broncos I certainly wouldn’t quantify him as fast. If I recall he looked like like the 52 year old dad at The School Parents Race Day as he passed the ball to Handley before he collapsed