Nigel Hawkins on twitter is very special.

Not the sharpest tool in the box that one. But a large tool nonetheless

Ahh the guy who upon hearing Ward was declared fit to play urged the Cas players to "smash that c**t" and that Ward was "bang average"

He's a fu****g tit that bloke...The end

Let's head back a prior 9 years from that game to the 10th October 2003 - the last tackle of the 2003 season for Leeds versus Wigan at Headingley. Sinfield made a break on the back of a Senior/Cummings break leaving Wigan flocking back in numbers but many offside. Rob Burrow at the dummy half throws the ball to Dunneman and via a pair or two hands later Mathers is tackled on the blind side giving victory to Wigan and them a path to the Grand Final.

If you watch the two instances back, there are many similarities and I strongly believe that Rob will have watched that back and thought if the opportunity arises itself, I will run at an offside defender and get a penalty to put us ahead.

The gift of experience.

While it wasn't a classic game it was by no means the worse GF of all time.
The fact Cas didn't turn up and McGuire was sublime made it a reasonable GF.

To be fair it was a hell of a purple patch, almost (key word) a season long in fact. But they will have learnt from it and [sizeIf [/sizethey can fill the gap left by the coke kid, they'll be there or there abouts next season.

It's going to be really tough to get a quality starting FB at this point of the year as they'll all be signed up. They still don't have the financial power to sign top established players and most likely why they couldn't pull off the Walmsley deal and are getting in guys like Garry Lol and Aston now being rumoured.

Whilst most don't rate him there I think we'll see Eden at FB next year, after all that looked like their original plan before Hardaker became available and they'll play Lo on the wing instead of loaning him back to Sheffield.

Totally agree with you on the difficulty Cas will have finding a quality FB at this point in time. I have edited my post accordingly

well I watched it again last night and the looks on the faces of the Castleford players when they were making mistakes as if they were going to burst into tears. They seemed very nervous

Had a good read through that independent Cas forum...WOW.
I'm very grateful to them for letting Leeds have their 15 minutes of fame, and for our one win in eight. Leeds are the crappest side to ever win the Grand Final, and if that perfectly good Eden try had been given, there's no doubt whatsoever, Cas would have rolled on and won the game comfortably. Special bunch that lot. P.S apologies to the thousands of Tiggers world wide who jetted in to watch James Child hand Leeds another title

I bet Peter Smith (yep) wishes he'd leave it out. Nearly everything he tweets Mr Hawkins always replies with bitterness and hatred towards us. He's declaring it would be another 66-10 job if we played Melbourne and can't see past his tiger glasses. I don't normally bother when people slag us off but this numpty is beyond belief! Just one thing to say Barry which will hurt you so much as you clearly are so bitter whilst most of your fans are over it but WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS my friend