Is he a denominator in the period of success that saw Leeds win two Grand Finals under their new coach, achieved after regular season finishes of first and second rather than fifth and fifth?

The "former champions who had lost the plot" then finished fourth in the regular season, were runners up at Wembley, and fell one match from the grand final despite being without their two best-performing players of the time.

I await your judgement of how much the plot has been lost should any or all of these benchmarks not be achieved in Brian McDermott's third season.

Maybe the title was a tougher proposition between 2004-2006 than it was later, i.e the opposition was better? That could've influenced the relative success under Smith.

The way I see it Powell built the side and made them into contenders. Smith made them winners. But no side wins all the competitions all the time. Despite not doing much in 2005 and 2006 you still made one GF and won a WCC. Since then the team has gone on and dominated SL, nobody has really come close to consistently matching Leeds when it matters. Losing the plot???

I think this post has been misinterpreted. It just lacks one colon and it starts to make sense. Observe...

From somebody usually quite keen on stats and evidence, this scans as hyperbole really. Is the claim that Leeds haven't been coached since 2007 something you can actually justify?

I have no intention of getting into a debate on the relative merits of Smith and McDermott. They arrived at very differnet times in the club's development to do very different jobs. I would still make a case myself for Smith being the better coach in that context, but it's a big leap from there to dismissing any coaching role from 2 pretty successful successors.

Yes turned them into champions....he then turned them back into underachievers, before getting it right on GF night '07, something McDermott does and is criticised still.

The way people paint it is that whoever took over after Smith COULDN'T fail, when they so easily could've. At the start of 2008 he left behind a squad still deemed 2nd best to Saints (as shown by the LLS and CC Semi). Over time McClellan installed a fight in them that Smith couldn't and did what he couldn't....finish above a competitive and strong Saints team in the league table.

People might be waiting for McDermott to achieve something with 'his own side'.....well I'm waiting for Smith to go somewhere without the luxury of big signings and 'do it tough'......but in reality he'll probably end up at Salford if Koukash can deliver on big signings. No coach since the beginning of 2004 has been given more luxury in terms of player recruitment yet he's only won 2 out of a possible 7 GF's.

As for the culture HE introduced, are we going to forget the roles Dean Bell, Darryl Powell & GH played in it before Smith even arrived. Smith praised for his ruthlessness, yet who went out and got him and ditched Powell in possibly the most ruthless move at the club over the last decade?

I reckon quite a few coaches could've come and achieved the same amount as Smith over those 4 years, whether it be they had to wait until the latter years to pick up the chunk of the 5 titles Smith managed. I think less coaches could've won the GF back to back in the last 2 years (even if they finished higher in the table), certainly not Smith who has failed in 3 straight attempts with Wire even though they play the better rugby and finished higher in the league. If coming into a new club at the right time and moulding them into GF winners is Smith's quality....then why hasn't he done it at Wire? He again has been 'given' the resources to do so. The last 2 occasions his Harlem Globetrotters haven't been able to beat The Idiot and his OAP's. Is it because of the vast playoff experience Leeds have?......Well so did Bradford in the 2004. The personalities and characters of the likes of Sinfield, JJB and Peacock, so key to our success weren't moulded by Smith.

Any news on Watkins injury yet

I wouldn't have thought so but sometimes I like to post in a whimsical manner, not expecting it to be taken entirely seriously.

That said I see what McDermott is doing and I'm not finding it an attractive proposition at this point in the season. The goal-line defence is particularly concerning where players seem incapable of working consistently as a unit for a full set of six and are often found wandering around doing their own thing. This becomes doubly frustrating up at the other end of the field when opponents simply refuse to open up like the Red Sea and Leeds have to actually earn their scores by passing the ball to Watkins which usually results in a difficult conversion attempt.

Sky sports app mentions that he will be out for AT LEAST 8 weeks, but doesn't mention what the injury is

Smiths reign was abit of a strange one.

For the first 18 months everything was the dogs bollox. But then things went west and weren't recovered until just before he left. There was alot of frustration and mediocrity sandwiched between those 2 sl wins. Remember blowing the treble in 2005? CC semi defeat to an average hudds in 2006? Or the playoff defeat at home to at the time an average warrington?

Smith's quality is producing teams that go out and play entertaining football - that entertainment more often than not results in winning rugby, which can in turn lead to trophies but not always inevitably in every competition as that would be unrealistic.

Warrington had won nothing of note for a long, long time prior to Smith replacing Lowes in March 2009. They'd got off to a disastrous start as Lowes imploded under the pressure - the televised shocker at home to Les Catalans (20 - 40), humiliation at Wakefield in round 3 (48 - 22) even Leeds managed to get out of Warrington with a win in Smith's first game in charge (12 - 20). The effort to impress the new boss backfired a week later with the nadir of the season at the Stoop (60 - 8 ) ending the opening five rounds plum last on the table without a win or a sign of a win in sight. Smith had to take Warrington apart in season and start from first basics. What followed was an up and down season but he'd got into the culture of the club and begun to overhaul it. He set the lead, you either followed it or you were gone. Warrington before Smith arrived had been a six to eight finishing team in recent seasons capable of beating the best and equally capable of losing to the worst the league had to offer.

Historically no Championship for a staggering 54 years and while they're still waiting they're finally contenders again, having also won a LLS and broke out of the mid-table non-descripts and into being one of the contenders. Smith took them backwards (helped by Lowes' awful start) to propel them forwards as they went from finishing 6th to 10th to 3rd to 1st to 2nd. Meanwhile in the Challenge Cup - this time a 35 year wait - won at the first attempt with two more added in the next three seasons.

Smith had won the final trophy open to him in the domestic game with Leeds and returned after an 18 month gap as the International supremo to win the next one available to him this time with Warrington. He turned Leeds from nearly men to winners in under a year and he did the same again in his next domestic role - getting two enormous monkeys off the respective club's backs in the process.

I remember us narrowly losing the 2005 GF to a Bulls team including the temporary services of Adrian Morley, a loophole which was quickly closed, but too late for us.

Disgraceful suggestions AGAIN on here that 'anybody' could have coached Leeds to the GF win in 2004. As tvoc explained, that was a massive achievement that no Leeds team had come near since the early 70s. Smith also replaced more than half the team between the 2005 and 2007 GFs.

Bluey OTOH won both GFs without a single big signing playing a part (Buderus being here but missing the GF). That would suggest that he inherited a quality team, and that if a Leeds team could have been coached by 'anyone' to win GFs, it was the team under Bluey. The fact that he got turfed after one season badly affected by injuries to JP and McGuire suggests that was possibly GH's view as well.

Clearly not as only 4 trophies from a potential 15 at his time at Leeds proves. Quite a quality to win the LLS in 2004 and with his team of Smith-made-Champions only win 3 of the next 13 titles (and 1 of the last 11)......meanwhile the team (Saints) who finished 15pts and 8 defeats behind this new champion team would go on to win 7 of those 11! Similar story after lifting the LLS '11, only 1 success from 6 (and the LLS ain't looking great for them atm) whilst McDermotthas taken 3 of the next 7 since then. Nice pattern emerging here.



Yes Warrington have improved, but hardly surprising when (since they knocked Smith and Leeds out of the '06 playoffs) they've signed Morley, Atkins, Hodgson, King, Anderson brothers, Monaghan brothers, Myler, Ratchford, Waterhouse, Carvell and others. Similar situation as Leeds, the guy above him making the signings deserves a huge chunk of the credit. Granted they've won CC's (helped breaking the trophy draught by facing another team who'd not won anything in ages in the '09 final) but their playoff records shows he still hasn't turned them and the club into 'Champions' even though its his 'speciality'.

Given that he has another 2 years after this one on his contract I would bet he'll win them one GF at least but even 2 from 6 full seasons given his resources would be slightly underachieving, if he only lifts one then massive underachievement.

Quite interesting how he left it so late last year to sign a new contract at Wire, probably waiting to see if another team eager to splash cash was available to him......especially since Wire coincidentally didn't add to their squad in the off season. Quite like how when he left Leeds the big signings dried up, must've gotten the word from GH that players of the likes of Webb, Peacock, Lauitiiti and Ellis weren't going to so regular anymore. Without big signings Smith wanted away and didn't want to build a dynasty. Shows the measure of the man really and it ain't great.

The point made was that McDermott played an important role as Smith's assistant coach in producing a mental toughness and winning mentality in the Champion side that McLennan inherited.




The team McDermott inherited were not Champions. They were badly prepared for the WCC in 2010, they were badly beaten in the Cup final, and were knocked out of the playoffs at home to Wigan 6-26. For much of the season they played poor rugby. If it is an overstatement to say the team had not lost the plot they still had gone backwards or gone off the boil or whatever.


In McDermott's first season he was without 2 of the most influential players for half the time and had an several other first teamers out injured and therefore it took time to bring back the champion ethos. It is to his great credit that he was able to produce the turnaround from 8th place in July and then to a historic Championship win from 5th place and unlucky to be lose the Cup final to Wigan along the way.

In his 2nd season McDermott won the WCC and again reached the Cup Final and against all the odds once again produced a Champion side form the disadvantage of 5th place What many of his critics overlook is that he is working with the same key group of players who are older, slower and past their best and so has a big disadvantage compared to the two former coaches.



Even if Leeds win nothing this year, McDermott will still have a better record of getting to finals than McLennan

I wonder which SL clubs will be clamouring to sign McDermott if and when his tenure at Headingley is over?

There has only been one consistent throughout, Gary Hetherington. The one person that was here prior to the 2004 title, assembling that squad that Smith coaches to the title. The one person that saw the transition through Mclennan and McDermott and the transition in personell.

That person remains in charge today and remains in charge of the transition going forward. Why anybody on here would think they know better than he what the squad needs in the next few years is beyond me.