Fair cop

... But the smallest forward...

Perhaps you were thinking of McIlorum's off the ball challenge on a Leeds half-back?

McIlorum "Shoves" a back, no surprise there... Soft $hite..

I think my point of view is if he was worried less about trying to milk a penalty and actually got on with it he wouldn't have lost the ball.

Not really any comparison between the two. McIllorum was penalised for a shoulder charge, it was marginally late but had he used the correct technique it may well have been legal. What Bailey did wasn't even in play! Just ran up behind someone and pushed him in the back like he was on the playground!

Yes and Tomkins fell like a little girl.

I said I think almost 2 seasons ago that I had. A lot of respect for McDermott and I was happy to have him at the club, but I had doubts that he was the right guy to rebuild Leeds over the next few seasons. It's a difficult job. You either have to change things because players retire or leave, or you have to make difficult choices, which could be to to keep experience and loose promising youth or let go club legends. I suspect that we will only know how well he's made these choices in around 2 years time. Frankly I'm not sure how things will go.

Coaching wise I see a strong defensive side where all the players work hard, but still don't see a team organised in attack to make best use of the talent we have.
The halves are a shambles at the moment and the other two key attacking positions are worse. 6, 7, 9 and 13 are just not creative enough at the moment. I agree with you Andy, we need McShane to start and have real game time at 9, we need an organiser at 7, and Sinny back at 13 and defending up the middle where he will be far more comfortable and effective. Burrow off the bench.
Leeds look at their most organised when they play up the middle and get Delaney, JJB etc hitting those inside shoulders in the middle of the park off quick PTB's from Kylie and Peacock. But it's not scoring us a lot of points this year and it all breaks down when we get near the try line or when we hit a brick wall defence. We also make too many mistakes and overwork our defence.

Realistically we should have beaten Saints and the Wigan result could have gone either way, and many posters at the beginning of this thread had us down for a mullering. I was never that pessamistic, but I was disappointed with the Saints result. We should have routed them, but our attack simply doesn't seem up to it.

Regarding the McGuire touch down that was disallowed, refs do seem to let play go on after an infringment when there's the VR to go back to.
Refs in non televised games blow straight away when a players runs behind his team mate with the opposition up tight in defence.
Silverwood blew for the VR when most of us hadn't noticed McGuire running behind the player. As Stuart Cummings explained, according to the rules it should have been disallowed.
Very even game though, 3 trys each, 2 conversions each and Wigan win with the 2 pens given away by Leeds in their own half.

Fair point but still not clever.

He was more interested in milking the pen though, close to your own try line just play the ball.

He was more interested in milking the pen though, close to your own try line just play the ball.

Didn't anybody else spot Pat richards try off a forward pass from Tomkins?

Yup totally ignored by the officials again !!

It's something that annoys me a little, where refs allow play to continue well downfield then go to the VR, the McGuire no try being a good example. For me in that situation the ref has already made his decision by allowing play to continue. Had McGuire been tackled by Tomkins and Leeds scored on the play after then the VR couldn't have been used.

No but I spotted a try from Richards from a totally legal pass from Tomkins so I guess all's well that ends well.

I was pretty much in line with Hardakers pass back to Sinfield and that looked forward to me. Happens both ways.

Slightly OT but there was some great banter with the Bradford fans yesterday, including the conga past the main body of out support

I'm not finding myself too gloomy at the moment. We were disappointing against Saints, but against Hudds and Wigan we found out that we're going OK but not quite at the level of the current 2 best teams in the competition. Most of the difference is that things aren't quite clicking in attack.

I see no cause for panic. If we play like that next time out I think we'll beat Hull. There's time for this stuff to come good, and time for Wigan and Hudds to drop off a bit. We look a much better side than at this point last season.

You never know William might reinstate his mini-league now.

Leeds didn't play well. Didn't have much quality ball, or field position (we retained the usual handling errors and silly penalties) yet we nearly nicked it. The fact that Wigan couldn't really put us to bed will be noted by both coaches for a likely future meeting this season.

Very pleasing how Sutcliffe and Singo applied themselves.

It was a strange one - we gifted them a try (arguably a second with the penalty to concede field position for Richards try) and then kept them scoreless in the second half. I personally thought we looked the dominant side for the majority of the game and should have won it.

To think we have Peacock, Ablett, Delaney and Ward to come back into that side I think the positives far out weigh the negatives in this performance.

Wigan may have won but I can't imagine they'll be too complacent by their performance.

Could have gone either way.

I thought we were poor in attack, but like you we have a number of players out.

Enjoyable game, not perfect but both teams have improvements to be made.

See you in the Grand Final.

Agree with all of this. This team is very reliant on a fully fit Peacock but it's doing us good to cope without him...

Can we see you in the semi instead? We never beat you in finals.

You are steve ganson and i claim my five pounds