If Ferres and Ablett are fit to start at 2nd row on Thursday then Achurch will drop to the bench. Keinhorst maybe needed to start at centre for Moon.

I'd rather go with Walters on the bench, he might miss a few tackles, but at least he puts 100% effort in.

Is Walters fit at the moment? Not seen him turn out for Featherstone whilst he's been out of the Leeds team so assume he's injured?

Not the first time this season either. Remember him waving Pritchard through in the Hull FC game at home? Wanted nothing to do with getting in his way that night either.

If he gets in above Keinhorst it shows how bad BmD is for favourites.

Is Achurch a McDermott favourite?

He played well last week so was there any reason to drop him?

I know, when he didn't even make the 19 man squads at the start of the year and playing for Fev some people were saying it was obviously because he's not a McDermott favourite.

As soon as someone is picked he must be a McDermott favourite, he doesn't get picked it's because he's not in McDermott's favourites group.

Having watched it back, whilst obviously a poor attempt on Williams by Achurch, both Singleton and Segeyaro get a hand to Williams and produce pretty poor attempts also.

I think people underestimate William's upper body strength, pace & side-step.
Give him credit for scoring the try not blame Achurch for "letting him".

Are you kidding? He didn't side step anything. He went through the 6'7" turnstile like a knife through butter. Williams deserves credit for taking on the defensive line, but as for upper body strength, he was against Achurch not Escare

Achurch looks like Tarzan but plays like Jane

For those ridiculing Kirke
Irrespective of how much cap space was spent on either player, I would much rather have had Kirke in my 17 each week rather than soft cock Achurch
Kirke could be relied upon by all of his coaches to come on, even in a GF cameo role, and do his job well,he would take minimal carries and for very little ground gained,but he would defend the line like his life depended on it

Achurch on the other hand is a soft cock turnstile with the heart the size of a flea

He ought to get his priorities right and spend his life mincing around his gym in his Lycra shorts and Having his legs waxed or even having a spray tan



If you consider what salary Achurch has supposedly been on too,then it's Nathan Picchi all day long for me too i'm afraid,never mind Kirke

When people start to talk about a player as being inferior to Ian Kirke you know its that time

He was also crumpled 1 on1 by Williams before he lost the ball on our 10m zone as wel.
I've said since "Escaregate" he isnt good enough hopefully friday aslo puts paid to those who think he'd be worth a new deal.

I always thought Nathan Picchi had a storming 20 mins before dislocating his shoulder in his debut and ending his Leeds career.Your not comparing eggs with eggs.

We both agree on Pichii having a great cameo appearance for the Rhinos but he is often referred to as one of the lesser talented players that played for our club during a troubled season and was only on peanuts probably and found his RL level whilst playing for Rochdale

I was using Pichii as a derisory comparison to illustrate my utter contempt towards Achurchs' career at the Rhinos and the supposedly big money contract he was paid to tempt him over from Penrith

Kirke was worth every penny paid to him IMO in a salary capped sport and did a bloody good cameo job each game he played for us

Plenty of "clouded" memories re-Kirke imo for a minimum of his last 2yrs he was a passenger literally & if ever there was a Mc.D fav he was it absolute garbage & failed to punch his weight.
SC blah nowt he wasn't worth paying in washers.

Kirke was found out massively when he was called on for a bit more game time those last couple of years. He did the little JP breather stints ok for a few years because he was solid enough in defence but his willingness to take the ball up and do the hard yards was pretty much non existant and for a bloke his size and build it wasn't good enough. Like i say though, he did his little cameo's ok for a few years and was always trusted in GF's from the bench and never let us down in them.He won't have been on big money either so when i look back in several years time, i would be looking back more fondly on Kirke than Achurch.

Think Kirke's best attribute was his ability to hold up the ball carrier and not let them get on their front and get a quick ptb.....something the team this year have been very poor at.

Even if the best people can say about Kirke is "he never let you down", that still puts him way above Achurch.

I thought Picchi looked useless in his 20 minutes for Leeds. FWIW. Which isn't much.

Kirke has 5 Grand Final rings. Let that sink in

And Ricky Bibey had plenty of medals, and I think he only played about a 120 games in the super league.

Think we paid £3k from York for Kirke and he will have earned peanuts.........5 grand final rings later people moan about him. He was what he was a 4th or 5th choice prop.

Did people expect this 3k Championship player to really be the equal of JP????

In a salary cap squad you have to have fillers who are happy to play for a small wage to allow players like like Sinny, JP, Ali, Senior, Webb, Maguire, Burrow etc to stay together.

I don't think Kirke was happy to play for a small wage, He probably just knew his realistic value as a player - not very much. I hardly think GH was there offerng him 100k and he was saying ''No gary please, pay me 50k I want mags and burrow to stay with each other, i'm happy to play for a smaller wage''.

It was more about the club knowing the value of having a consistent reliable player low in value, in a salary capped sport.

It's fitting that Kirke and Achurch have gone into business together. Two big muscular fellas that can oil each other up and flex in front of the mirrors.

Two of the biggest, big girls blouses to ever waste the gift of a Rhinos first team jersey.