Wow! That first half blew away a lot of the gloom and despondency from last season. It was the quiet determination that most impressed me.
Vaughan may not be in the leadership group but what a leader by example.
Hard not to get giddy but next week likely to be a much tougher test.’
Just think Powelly has to try and squeeze in Maguire and Dudson at some point!

Pretty sure we’ve had some excellent packs in the SL era, or did you mean recently? It was only last year that most fans of other clubs were questioning why we’d let Hill, Cooper et al leave, so they can’t have been rated that badly?

On the evidence of last night though (which admittedly is way too early to make a proper judgement) this is a very balanced pack. Looking forward to seeing what McGuire can add too, if he keeps his mouth shut. And Dudson of course.

Aside all the improvements in attitude, size etc I also thought our passing (especially from dummy half) seemed a lot slicker than last season when it was ropey at best.

I'd like to see Wrench in this team too as some elusiveness in the centres would really add some potency to the attack.

Leeds were woeful and Hudds will be a very good side this year so not getting carried away. Vaughan making a good start to cult status.

I disagree, we had a great pack 2010 to 2012 and exceptional in 2011. Probably a prop short if being picky, however, we lost a GF from being cheated out of it with a dirty Wane injury tactic on Ratchford, and Smith leaving Hodgson out.

Just a caveat to the last 20 to 30 minutes. Sky and jenna Brooks did say that we did some tinkering positional wise. People not playing in the preferred position.
Not too bad. Even in that last 20-30 minutes. We scrambled well and kept Leeds out.
The 2 tries were positional errors from us. Which would be understandable that you may drop off slightly with fatigue and intensity after the high impact intensity 1st half and 1st 10 minutes. You really couldn't hold that high level intensity for so long. You need that breather.

Side note. I think it was 2 missed tackles all match. Which resulted in the tries.

Great effort from everyone and fingers crossed that's just the starting point and will allow us to kick on

The sight of kassiano and Vaughan joining with the crowd last night was fun, looked like they buying in to it.

At the 66 minute mark, the stats showed zero missed tackles. That’s a hell of a statistic no matter how badly Leeds played.

Their pack wasn’t that bad, it’s just that we made them start on their own line with our kicking game, and we didn’t miss any tackles. I hope that’s a key indicator for the season ahead, because as RD pointed out, you don’t have to have the league’s best three quarter line when you’re spending so much time in the opposition 20. That said, can’t wait to see what Connor Wrench could do behind that pack.

I pretty sure Leeds didn’t score a point while Vaughan was on the pitch. They scored within 5 mins of him going off, and we may not have scored either.

I thought Vaughan was excellent, but not our best player, that surely must go to Myler ?

Great to see excellent handling on show last night , very few handling errors & penalties kept to a minimum.. Lovely to see our forwards making plenty of headway upfield & we seem to have picked up some good ball handlers among them too.
Keep up the good work lads.

A very good performance compared to the opening game of 2022 against the same opposition. Not getting too carried away after just one game, but we were much more convincing than 12 months ago. Vaughn was like a machine, and was well supported by Harrison, Kassiano and Bullock. Defensively, we were much better organised, which bodes well for the season.

It's a small step, but I'm looking forward to getting a roll on and building on what we achieved last night.

I think you’re right that they only scored once Vaughan was off, but I think we also scored twice in that period through Harrison and Minikin.

Their second was easily preventable, but the first was decent work by O’Connor and Austin and a decent finish by Olpherts. Thewlis could have gone lower on him but I doubt it would have stopped him scoring.

first one was matautia jumping the line, you can't be too disappointed with that sort of try conceded.

the sangare one was a knackered mikaele being flat footed near the line

It was nice to see players and coach smiling and hear the crowd singing.

I know Minikin came on for Vaughan at 56min(!) but what position did he play? I couldn't work it out on the box.

Interesting that he was on the bench. Maybe DPs thinking is that with 5 props doing the business (incl Harrison) the Leeds side would be knackered (which they were) and bringing on a strong fast back would yield benefits (which it did).

Also who moved to 2nd row when Nicholson came off?