Like I said on the Wire board, it looked like a blatant obstruction.

I don't have a problem with it been a try, what I will have a problem with is the next dozen been sent upstairs and chalked off for the same or less infringement.

This is the issue for me too. You just know we are in for another long season of lottery decisions on obstruction.

Child may have had a bad game but that does not alter the fact that we had enough possession & field position to win that game twice over.
I'm sure that McDermott will not blame the ref for the result.
We need to concentrate on what we can control, not look for excuses elsewhere.

We should send for the Wigan ground staff ,apparently they have considerable expertise in preparing first class playing areas.

Absolutely....but again I can't see anybody making 'excuses elswhere' but simply making observations of the game ...including the poor refereeing which is subject to so much subjectivity and inconsistency of applying the 'rules'

We all knew Leeds were going to miss the 2 icons, but many felt confident that Leeds will still perform well this season, if not (understandably) quite reaching the heights of last season. I still believe that - subject to injuries of course (and already the ominous signs are there with the lengthy loss of Danny).

I like to think this season will be the making of Lilley (what a "find" he has been - he looks a natural and already worthy of a starting half back position: hope he gets that start against Widnes), Golding and Handley. Difficult to see yet who Golding and Handley will displace, but sadly as we have already seen with McGuire those opportunities might materialise rather sooner than anybody might have reasonably planned. Undoubtedly they are - like Lilley - both ready for SL.

Quite correct, it will be several weeks before we discover the real Leeds. Its early days but you look good. Your aggressive defence impressed me, add latchford to the squad and you could potentially be in the running for some silverware.

Bob Latchford? Didn't he play for Everton in the 70's - can't see him adding much but probably still more than Bailey will.

If Child was poor I think we're going to have to find some new words for when a referee doesn't go 7-0 in Leeds' favour second half and 11 - 5 over the full eighty.

Thaler fared worse IMO (although better man manager) - sent a dead set try up as a no try to be rightly overturned and had an excellent performance from his touch judge to save several other potential blushes - although again in his favour he quite correctly listened to and followed the advice he was given.

You get two for the price of one with my posting!! A footballer and a rugby player .

burrow 2 or 3 years ago would of flew in..he,ll a big loss to leeds when he retires as will child

He might "have flown" in too

.... IMO he hasn't lost that pace. He lost his bottle (atypical of a usually fearless player)

As for Child...you must be joking. We have Hardaker in our team: he is never going to forgive us that.

Currie had the angle on burrow and IMHO Burrow did the right thing - kept possession near their line against a broken defence. We were not good enough on next play to stretch wire to the other side and score.

Give over. Watch the replay.

I don't buy the argument that Leeds were unlucky not to win. It was a tight game that could have gone either way. Had the Rhinos won by 2 points Warrington fans could make the same argument.

No! Really!

A Wire fan with an unbalanced view? Get the f*ck outa town.

Field position & possession says if you do that on a regular basis your gonna get more than a few batterings.

Great effort and scramble by wire plus a pretty dodgy try and a piece of individual brilliance got you the win. Fair play to Wire. That's how it goes sometimes. You made your own luck.

What I take as a Rhino is if we dominate teams like we did on Thursday we will win a lot more than we lose.

:1cl1ehea

Sorry, I'll try and not be so unbalanced with my comments next time

Thanks for the welcome by the way.

:1cl1ehea

It's called good defence - or does that not count? Also we're only talking about one game here so this point is irrelevant. Wire may not defend that well every week but I'm sure they won't gift that much possession every week either. They defended well when they needed too.

:1cl1ehea

Well you can call anything luck if you just define luck as the thing you want to call luck.



What I take as a Wire is if we defend like we did on Thursday we will win a lot more than we lose. Same argument.

Lucky/unlucky

Leeds had 60 more plays than Wire, we made a 1/4 more meters than Wire, Wire conceded double the penalties.

With that position and possesion I thought we were unlucky to not get the win. We made some nice brakes but just didn't get the job done, looking a bit rusty.

Wires obstruction try was pretty fortunate. It didn't even go up stairs. Wires defensive line wasn't great but the scramble was outstanding which got you out of jail a few times.

Credit to Wire for holding it together. Great determination, great toughness to hold on. Great individual brilliance for the try.

A brave win.

9 times out of 10 stats like that would see a reversed result.

That's why I thought Leeds were unlucky.

Feel free to rebuff every sentence. It is your year!

I believe we should have won. And that's to take nothing away from Warrington who showed great heart and desire in defence to repel us time after time. I wouldn't term it unlucky though either, we had enough chances to win the game and didn't, for that we only have ourselves to blame.We will play a lot, lot worse than that this year and collect the 2 points. Like you say, it was a good close game, close enough to maybe say that had that kick gone over at the end the draw was a fair result and both sides would have been happy. Lets hope that is a sign of things to come for games between the top teams as i thought it was a great game considering it was the first of the year.

We were unlucky as far as the amount of possession and field position we had, we SHOULD have won the game. What is missed in that is that we were very lucky that you were indisciplined and kept continually turning over the ball, which was the very reason for all our field position. We weren't unlucky to lose, as you make your own luck, and our attacking threat was poor which is the bottom line.

Reminiscent of a couple of seasons ago....when it was actually better for us not to get too close to the opposition line for the best chance of scoring tries. Hopefully things will change....and again Lilley looks like our best option there, especially in Danny's enforced absence.

I've just watched the second half again. I'm still not sure how Wire managed to win.

I thought despite no McGuire and the rust I thought we played some nice stuff.

Early season it's always easier to defend than get our timing on attack right. Tough for both teams to post points, in the end goalkicking could have won it for us. Warrington scrambled well and our attack was disjointed, not helped at all by losing McGuire so early.
Not an easy opening fixture but given our often woeful early form prior to a WCC I'd rather we lost to a potential title contender (which Warrington may be this year) than what would be generally a banker 2 points later in the season. 2 points off Widnes would be nice though.

Time for Lilley and Sutcliffe to take their chance. I reckon by mid season we'll be looking at those two and thinking all is well with the halves for the next 10 years.

Defence is just as important in a game as attack. Despite our mistakes, we defended well and scored when we had the opportunity, which gave us the win. If Leeds had scraped a win I could argue that, considering they struggled to score, they were lucky Warrington coughed up so much ball which they wouldn't do 9 times out of 10. Call it luck if you want but I don't buy it.

Agree with that. I've been hugely impressed every time I've seen Lilley. Was it Catalans away when we got hammered that he made his debut? And in a well beaten team, playing out of position at hooker, I was massively impressed, just as i was with him in the NZ game.
As you say I think we'll soon be thinking all is well at half back, maybe not by mid-season, maybe not even next season. But if we have patience I'm pretty sure these 2 will come good.
The big question for me is what to do with Golding?

.....and Handley!!

You're assuming the present squad will remain intact by the time Golding's patience has run out. Maybe things will not work out and we will lose some talent the next year or so, but anything could/might happen between then and now. Contracts, who is valued the most and (god forbid) injuries could yet play a part.

Maybe Golding could become the new 'Burrow game changer' off the bench ....albeit not at dummy half, but at half back (Lilley moving into the DH position or Sutcliffe moving to LF)

...and as for Handley.....I don't know how long Moon will want to stay here (hopefully he does), but maybe Handley will take his place in the threequarters