the lads quality. he's 18 and played around 25 games. maybe slightly more. not sure what people are expecting.

Mental to be judging walker so harshly. Comparing him to blokes twice his age!

He doesn't get 'smashed' half as much as you are making out, do you get to watch the rhinos games in Australia?

He'll get the Sky games. Obviously he has limited viewing of Walker.

Sorry Brisbane. I enjoy your posts usually and know you're giving your opinion on this but the above line is somewhat delusional. Criticism on a message board is not going to make any player better. And we don't know what the coaching staff say behind closed doors. The impression I get from him, from the odd convo, is he's very level headed and determined to be the best player he can be. I agree he's behind other fullbacks in the league, but Sinfield, Peacock, McGuire, Burrow, Sculthorpe, Morley etc weren't world beaters in their second seasons. Yeah, he's got a long way to go to be a truly top player but he's got the time to do it. Put him in a team that's competitive and he'll be better, instead of one regularly playing on the back foot. All of the full backs you mentioned would struggle to look as good in this team

He's played reasonably well in what's been a mediocre Leeds team. The question isn't really whether Walker will get better, it's whether the team will. If it does, I don't see a problem. If it doesn't, I don't really see him doing so - unless he leaves.

Well he’s the only player to have a 10 page thread about him

Ironically started to counter the constant negativity about our players - obviously didn’t last long.

I'll happily admit to being hopelessly wrong about young players. I posted on here way back that Leeds should dump the young JJB because he was injury prone. I also wasn't convinced Ryan Hall was a world class player for a long time. OTOH I think I thought Marcus Vass was going to be good, and desperately wanted stormin Norman Francis to be a star because I loved watching him in the A Team despite the evidence being he really wasn't that good.

Mind you, I was right about Richard Gunn. He had a very square head which I didn't like, so I decided he was going to be rubbish. Which he was.

Hopefully we recruit a good coach who can improve the team, get us motivated and playing to our strengths again. Once the team as a whole is improved I'm sure we'll see an upswing from the younger guys who have been badly let down by some of the more senior players recently.

I'm pretty sure I also bagged JJB when he was a young player, IIRC for his injury record and propensity to drop the ball, and later for the bizarre coaching move of playing him as a prop forward. Really came into his own around 2007-8, and I remember being happy to have been proven wrong! Likewise, I also regret bagging Stevie Ward when he was struggling for form a few years ago (before some of the bigger injuries he later sustained).

I think most fans could learn to be a bit more patient with players, especially those early in their careers. It's unfortunate that younger players can sometimes come under such intense (and unfair) scrutiny - typically because they have been over-hyped, play in an important position, or the team as a whole isn't playing well.

I think you're going to have to draw a diagram to make that gobbledygook make sense.

Makes perfect sense to me Gotcha...You think that Walters is going to become a star by not being hyped