The two yellows from our game were a joke. Barely even penalties……

This probably won’t cheer you up Chris.

I’m going to leave Oxen and blame RU for the pitch, it might not be their fault but I’ll still blame 3rd rate kick and giggle garbage.


One major concern is that the desire to win has gone from GH and The board.
Watching McManus at Saints over many years you can tell he’s desperate to win.
Since 2015 we’ve been generally poor to average.
There have been a lot of stuff of late that looks wrong to me (admittedly from the outside with no knowledge).
Sinfield leaving, our captain Gale falling out with Agar and leaving.
Gale going on TV and saying there trouble at Leeds.
Hurrell playing for 3 years as. Marquee player whilst permanently at best a bit overweight at worst fat and unfit. He has gone to Saints as a reserve and looks like has lost 10 kilos or more.
The strange pre Wigan interview with Sezer and Austin, where Sezer do not make eye contact With austin. Wilkin commenting on how flat, negative it was.
The Agar presser where he said about flogging a dead horse was a desperate plea for the players to show they are still with him.
To me once you’ve said that on TV it’s all over, he’s a dead man walking. I reckon there will be a response v Salford but it won’t last.
We have little pace and little resilience to injuries.
We’ve signed Tetevano as a marquee, he is nowhere near that level.

Overall, we are drifting in mediocrity at best and I don’t see anyone in the organisation busting a gut to change it.
I Don’t know if Agar’s hands are tied but if he is doing recruitment I’ve no faith in him being DoR.
Furner was trying to shake things up and rattle cages, he did not get chance to finish the sort out.
He’s now paid off and for mine we should be striving to get another Holbrook type in who is desperate to be successful.
IF, big IF we go back to another old boy, the only one for me
Would be Danny McGuire who has RL brains, is a relentless competitor and a winner.

Seeing Wigan get nilled on the other hand…

Yeah looks like a 2 horse race again. Perhaps another year where abject mediocrity can be masked by still making the playoffs.

Cas, Salford and Hull kr at home. Toulouse, Wigan away. Not exactly had the hardest start to the season.

To be fair, what did you expect when you appointed Agar as coach? Could you imagine a big club like Saints appointing a mid table coach like that? Of course not.

I couldn’t imagine Leeds, or even a championship team, appointing Kieron Cunningham

Leeds are typical of many businesses where the management team have become stale. They have done fantastically for the club since 96 but all good organisations are constantly improving in all areas - can this be said of Leeds?

Its the small things that define great culture and progressive companies. If you are buying tickets you don't want to waste 20 minutes trying to contact someone - it smacks of either arrogance or insufficient funds to run the function correctly. You want to buy quality merchandise not overpriced junk. The interaction between the club and its supporters needs to be top notch - Rob Oates and JP on whatsapp two days before the game doesn't cut it and smacks of desperation. The output on the club website is dull and uninspiring. All these things can be fixed quickly and easily with minimal cost - its an attitude thing. Do you feel like a valued customer or someone the club is trying to extract as much cash as possible.

Has the matchday experience changed positively in the last 20 years - IMO it has gone backwards. It dull sterile and appears to lack any kind of interest from the club. Why would anyone buy a program?

What the club is really interested in is filling the corporate seats - not a bad idea as this subsidises the cost of season tickets for the rest of the fans. Rob Oates does a brilliant job in that respect but these customers are not core and most have little interest in the game and this impacts on the atmosphere at games.

The core of this is the team - does the club have the skills internally to turn this around? Why is it that Leeds struggle to spot a good young coach e.g. Holbrook, Wolfe, Watson, Robinson - Agar should not be anywhere near a top side as head coach. Can GH actually spot a top young coach and get him to come to Leeds? Leeds have spent considerably on the squad but they seldom seem to get signings right these days why? Where are Ali, Senior, Buderus type of signings?

This is a great club playing in a great stadium that needs bringing up to date - investment is needed in the coaching which is truly shocking at all levels. Fresh ideas are needed at the top - perhaps that was what Sinfield was going to bring - sadly that didn't work out - the revitilise this great club

Take a look at the NRL and see how far ahead their clubs are

As opposed to serial winner Daryl Powell?

Zoo Zoo you cant compare us to NRL clubs their budgets are massive compared to SL clubs now and thats the reason we dont see players like Ali and Buderus coming over these days or very rarely. SL clubs are usually in the bargain basement.

That said, the rest of your post about the club being stale, about the valuing of supporters, merchandise, website etc is absolutely first class i could not agree more with you. Very well said.

Fair point about the NRL but our signings do seem to be very poor - we don't seem to be spot the moneyball players - Ware at Catalans, Hastings when he was at Salford etc. would we not be better spending the money on better English players - Tom Johnstone for Fasitua, Toby King instead of Hurrell, Oliver Holmes for Martin etc.

Weve lost our way in both the transfer market and also in player retention thats for certain. I do think the club tried to add quality this off season tho so far that hasnt worked out for whatever reason.

The club management does seem stale tho. The ticket office is a joke, the merchandising well its laughable really. The hard core fans are taken for granted thats for certain.

Given the price of a burger and chips at the stadium it might be cheaper to go corporate and get a 3 course meal. Jeez £7 for 3 chicken nuggets and chips.

Oh boy im getting old.

Saints season ticket holders go free to academy and reserve games which are played at Saints ground. We have to pay £4 to stand in the Stanningley mud under garbage floodlights. Leeds can surely do better than that? Its simply not good enough.

Corporate is £230 a head - to watch that garbage - if you were spending corporate money would you spend it at Leeds? Facilities in the new North stand are stunning on a par with any PL ground so maybe you would given the game is secondary to the food/booze etc.

Youth development which used to be at the core of the club's culture hasn't produced a half back in 20 years nor a hooker, nor a quality prop. Youth development at Leeds reminds me of a musician with writers block - they never get when they have no money only when they don't really need to write.

I agree about Stanningley is that really how the club treats stars of the future - RU takes precidence over pitch usage. Crowds are about the same.

To be fair to the club, they've had it harder than most off the pitch in the last few years. They've had to finance the stadium redevelopment whilst having most of their revenue streams from the rugby and hospitality parts of the business cut off over the last 2 years. So you can see why they may be trying to cut costs, but not paying academy players is a disgrace.

I definitely agree regarding the marketing and social media output is abysmal. Phil Daly has been doing it for 25 years, and it still has a very '90s' feel about it. They to get someone in to do it who can bring some energy to it. In fact, there just seems to be a lethargy throughout the whole club and it's seeped through into the team. You can have a good squad like we do, but if you don't play and train with intensity it's irrelevant what players you have. A change of coach or at least a replacement for Sinfield is needed to drive up standards again.

The pitch has been a joke for years. We used to always have one of the best in the country all season. I get that it's harder to maintain a pitch in winter, but the RU team don't play on it anymore, do they?

As for the merchandise. Cheap tat is the default setting for most clothing these days, so it's not all Oxen's fault, it's the system we have. I.e. clothes manufactured for next to nothing in Asia or south America are then sold to us at a huge mark up for us to wear for a few months and then get rid of. This is pretty much how the fashion industry in general works, so it's not going to change anytime soon.

Fusitu'a looks pretty good to me. It would have been a sensational try, if given, on Friday night. He made his try against Wakey look ridiculously easy. Went through three players tight to the touch line without blinking. He's still feeling his way back, but if he gets decent ball he'll get a bag full. Obviously decent ball playing outside Briscoe is going to be an issue. Guess my wider point is, when we have a defeat like the one on Friday everything is suddenly completely broken. I get it, I've been to every game this season, and in the main it's been very depressing. But not everything is broken, despite what some are now saying, we still do have excellent young players (with more to come) and the half backs will get it right if they have a platform. It might well take some change at the top of the operation to turn the club round, but it shouldn't be done in haste. Get it wrong or do it cheap and we'll move no further forward.