Think people are encouraged with the first half. We played well at times and poorly at others. I'd be more worried if we played well for the full game and still lost....were do you go from there if no obvious room for improvement? Things to work on clearly when we next play them but some stuff went well that we can take into the next encounter. A right winger in decent form would've been a big help to us and made a difference.

Mcshane is quality,Roberts back next week as well.
Thought young Tom Holmes did ok though

Handley is awful.

Consistently out of position, slow and can't tackle.

Rinsed 3 times in 20 minutes by Shenton and Eden. Not even close to being man on man.

Remember Briscoe being touted by NRL clubs? Yeah, me too.

JJ and McGuire again ith STUPID penalties at the start of the second half. Will they ever learn?

More brainless coaching - who in their right mind has 2 backs on the bench - one a winger against a rampant Cas side , with their pack - BRAINLESS !!
Made worse when one of the other subs is Mullally - Aichurch mark 2 - looks like TARZAN , plays like Jane -!!!!

Whatever Baldwinson`s current level of ability - he had to be on the bench today.

Game plan today - one major task, clatter Gale - anybody see any sign of it !!!

This standard of brainless coaching cannot continue.

McShane is such a good player. What he lacks in speed he makes up for intelligence. Wouldn't trade Macca for any hooker in SL .

Tough game today, of course we are beatable, we've lost 3 games, but it's about responding after a defeat and how to win tough. We have actually done that a couple of times this year and I will include today because that first half was as physical as any we've been in. But we came out and applied kick pressure in the second half, forced errors and took our chances.

To have a winger and burrow on the bench leaving just 2 out and out forwards I thought was really poor. Baldwinson deserved a game tonight imo .

Re the hooking sequence at Leeds when McShane was coming through. Diskin went at the end of 2010, Buderus went at the end of 2011 - McShane inherited tne coveted number 9 shirt for 2012 but basically started out the season playing second fiddle to McDermott's choice of starting Rob Burrow there - until the fortuatous pick up of Shaun Lunt mid-season, after which McShane barely got a look in at all. 2013 McShane retained the number 9 shirt but Burrow again was preferred as starting hooker until an injury to McGuire shifted Burrow back into the starting halves with McShane finally getting a run as starting hooker. As soon as McGuire returned, McDermott returned Burrow to hooker and McShane didn't feature again and was out of the club before the start of the 2014 season with the 9 shirt going to Paul Aiton.

It appears fairly clear that McDermott didn't ultimately rate McShane or Liam Hood or Robbie Ward who had all been given a taste of 1st grade under his tenure before Aiton's arrival.

A few of you can simmer down a bit now, small town of 40k absolutely wallaped and humiliated the big city. More fans and better players needed ladies and gentlemen

You forgot can't play the ball or catch. If he's slow though how come he got closest to catching Tom Holmes from the opposite wing on his breakaway try.



Didn't Leeds only concede two penalties all game? One was Briscoe's blatant obstruction on Eden on a high kick the other McGuire marginally offside on a kick chase. Should have listened to Bentham who gave him plenty of warning he was off. Jones-Buchanan blameless on that one, stayed onside from Moon's kick downfield.

Handley on the bench was an odd selection on the face of it.
I have no insight here and don't know if Briscoe is carrying an injury or not but have thought a couple of times this year that he looked like a man who might have non work related issues on his mind.

In short a bit distracted.

Just watched BMs after match interview.
Not sure I was at the same game.

Can Walker play on the wing? That's probably the next cab off the rank.

I feel a bit for both Briscoe and Handley. Briscoe's coming off some bad injuries, and it may just be that he's never going to be quite right again. Handley hasn't had a proper run in one position this year. He'd personally probably have done better just staying at Fev and getting some confidence in one position or other. Either way they are both shocking ATM, but you can't move Watkins to the wing unless there's no other option IMO.

Golding's weird. The fact that a kid who looks a natural halfback doesn't get involved in any passing moves is really odd.

Right side defence has been a problem for over 18mths that's not down to just Briscoe or Handley.
We still lack a genuine Leader and Architect in the Halves and that Pack lacks genuine power and bite over a full 80 minutes.
Wrt Sutty and Goal-kicking we are finally seeing what he's always been capable of but now he's not playing jabbed up on one knee without proper re-hab.
We make the same dumb mistakes with and without the ball and having only 2 forwards on the bench when already missing 2 Props and Abbo was just ridiculous.

Re McShane, he got a lot of stick on here IIRC about his lack of fitness. He always looked to have a good rugby brain.

Handley lacks rapid acceleration and his positional sense is woeful. He was directly responsible for two and possibly the third Eden try.
Briscoe looks mentally shot and is clearly lacking confidence. I'm not sure what good playing and then replacing him did.
McGuire is well past his best and, although I have always been a big fan, he needs to be released.

On reflection, i don't think we should be too peeved or disheartened by that showing.We matched them for the first 40 minutes, the killer was we had 3 big name pack men in Galloway, Garbutt and Ablett missing and if we would have had them i don't think there would have been very much more than a couple of points in the game either way. Cas have been very fortunate so far not to suffer several injuries in bunches, especially to key players and have been able to name the same 17 most weeks barring a player or two. But that's rugby, hopefully we get our best 17 on the field when it counts at the business end then we'll see.

What is seriously worrying as we can all see is our right edge. An absolute joke against Catalans and it's something Cas have exploited on several occasions now.

has to be down to not being allowed. look at Hardaker now, looks like Wally Lewis at times given the freedom from Powell but was hammered constantly on here for having no passing game.

I don't know why people have decided golding looks like a natural half back. Is it from his academy days? I've never seen a kicking game from him, his attacking ability seems non existent and I can't claim to have seen obvious strength in organising and passing. I'm not saying you are wrong, I'm just wondering what people have seen to think he is best suited there.

Regarding the handley decision on the bench. Before the game my thought was that maybe McDermott went with that as cas are so mobile and throw the ball around. Move sutcliffe to the back row and handley to centre and you have an option of someone who is mobile and can make a break in sutcliffe. JJB, Delaney, Fat Ferress are not the mobile 2nd rowers they used to be. So maybe BMcD saw moving sutcliffe there as a different dynamic depending how the game was going with a mobile cas. Rather than having Baldwinson on the bench who is another plodder.

However that was all put to bed when briscoe got subbed for handley. Briscoe looks an absolute shadow of himself and handley is not the answer.

Bit harsh on blaming JJB & Mags who gave away 1 penalty each when it was more down to errors and a lack of tactical kicking and great finishing by Cas at a crucial time in the game.

IMO Handley has always shown defensive weakness both in positional play and a lack of commitment in the tackle. Briscoe is not the same player he was a couple of years back and now lacks speed and concentration. I would be selecting young Walker

Maybe if he signs for Cas we will see a more improved attacking full back who can also defend.

I would certainly be selecting Walker ahead of both Briscoe and Handley and would have done before last nights errors from these two. Briscoe if out of form and is lacking concentration. Handley has shown in the past he can run with the ball but IMO has always lacked defensive commitment in the tackle and does not have good hands.

Golding has been outstanding in defense at fullback and has shown he is an elusive runner and often is backing up the ball carrier without getting the pass. As a junior he showed great attacking qualities and I think he was been concentrating of improving his defensive game first and now he has done that we will see the attacking side of his game blossom too.

Those were my thoughts too. We knew Cas would move the ball wide and I was concerned at our lack of speed in the forwards to deal with this threat. But Briscoe's errors forced his hand. Hindsight is easy but I am not sure Baldwinson would have made much of a difference against Cas.

But they were stupid penalties, straight after half time when Cas had just had 15 mins rest.

Unnecessary and sadly all too frequent.

They scored from the next set.

Must say Moon is excellent though and deserves a lot of praise.

Well we put in a better performance than I thought we would, the game was lost on the bench as we couldn't keep the physical intensity up for the full 80 but that is an easy fix.

What's not an easy fix is our lateral defence, especially on our right edge. For Eden's first try I'm fairly certain it was a 6v3 which is insanely poor numbering up and then there was little effort to rectify it. For all the complaints about Handley's defence he was left to mark Shenton and Eden repeatedly so he was never going to have much success. It doesn't excuse his effort for Eden's last though, that was all down to him. I still think we should persist with Handley for a few weeks and give Briscoe a bit of time off to sort himself out as he is clearly struggling with something.

What was interesting was how easy it was for us to score on their edges, our outside backs crashed over quite easily and hopefully we'll be looking to exploit this the next time we meet. Sutcliffe is looking increasingly comfortable at centre and I hope McDermott resists the temptation to move Sutcliffe elsewhere when we have players back.

I think we're not far off from becoming a top team again, we just need a better halfback combination and a change in the coaching set up, preferably a new head coach but if that's not feasible then a couple of attack minded assistants.

We did score easily out wide, but the game had gone and Cas had the rookies Foster and Holmes filling in at centre for Webster, and a missing Roberts. We didn't crash over when the game was live.