Woeful performance against London : Sun Jul 07, 2024 8:32 am  

Sitting in the stands on Saturday with probably 30% of seats vacant in the area I sit which is usually full the remainers talked about the reasons which we quickly concluded was down to England match @ 5pm.
80 minutes later we all had changed our view that a fair proportion was down to excruciatingly poor play on the pitch. Some of us suggesting perhaps the players were the real problem and Smith simply was not good enough to sort the problem out.

Looking at some key players yesterday some of us thought

We need a leader Cam Smith is not good enough to be a water carrier

Miller is a total waste of a shirt as is Fusi

Newman is a spoilt child with no clue as to how to get out of his own self destruct spiral.

The 3 Ex French players are well meaning but clueless

All props are trying but ineffective especially Oledski who seems to have lost his skill and spark

The only players yesterday who looked like they knew what to do were Croft, Martin and Ackers.

As an interim I would turn training over to those 3 and let them form a game plan and let Walker and Grix fill the water bottles.

Re: Round 16| London Home : Sun Jul 07, 2024 9:37 am  

mattsrhinos1978 wrote:

As already mentioned, the mentality around this club is absolutely disgusting, its widespread and been going on for years. Yesterday shouldnt suprise anyone, coming off a half decent result, the useless puddings suddenly think they're the 82 Aussies.

They think they're better than they are, put their leeds tracksuit on, burn a few belongings, talk some absolute poop about personality colour schemes, hang JJB's poop metal Rhino on a wall and they think they've made it, just have to turn up against someone like London

Add in 3 god awful coaching hires in a row, influencing these players, recipe for disaster. Yesterday was Smith rugby in a bottle, why work hard and play physical and patient, when theres all these shortcuts you can try, his rebuild has been a total disaster.

Good news, atleast GH/the club seem to have finally woke up, relised the game has passed him by, relised being an ex player with no experience isnt the answer, and got someone with an actual CV and recent expierience of successfully building squads and hiring coaches, in to sort it out. So despite yesterday, im pretty excited for the future, by that i mean the rest of this season once Arther gets here, and next season with Blease getting hold of everything...No 5 year plans, in rugby terms, its an utter myth fed by incompetent people, everyone will say it, but the competent onces will do it in one or two.

Excellent posting, no apologies for once again for posting what a deeply flawed side we are. Both physically and mentally, yet again we conceded a try under our own posts from weak tackling. As for Momirovski he looks like he would be happier modelling for grattons catalogue than playing rugby.
Most of the team aren’t willing to undertake the hard graft, what a complete shambles. Big test coming up at Warrington, perform similar to yesterday then it will be a long night.

Re: Round 16| London Home : Sun Jul 07, 2024 10:43 am  

Ex-Swarcliffe Rhino wrote:

All the howling for Chev & Grix to stay in place are perhaps seeing that maybe it wasn’t just Rohan at fault.
More “Vibes Rugby” from Leeds who let’s be honest absolutely stunk. I cannot wait for Brad Arthur to come in hopefully kick the living bejesus out of this rabble.

Agreed…I can however see a scenario a bit like with Furner, where Arthur comes in and tells us all what we already know in that lots of the players are not good enough/not as good as they think they are (and let’s those players know) but hopefully this time if/when some of them go moaning to Blease about how harsh the new coach is etc, instead of siding with the players like GH/Sir Kev did when getting rid of Furner, Blease has the balls to tell the players that Arthur is right and that some of you need to work harder and/or are not good enough for what a Leeds team should be and let’s them know that if they are going to sulk and cry about it, then “there’s the door”

Re: Round 16| London Home : Sun Jul 07, 2024 10:52 am  

The squad was so poor under Furner and not fixed under Agar that achieving a complete turnaround in less than 3 years was probably impossible given salary cap issues. I think Smith did a good job of getting rid of some dead wood, but some of those brought in are as poor as the ones who left, which means we're not as far into squad renewal as we should be. That's aside from coaching issues.

Generally though its really hard to argue that the club lost its focus years ago. It does now feel with Blease taking over that there's a recognition that everything ultimately stems from the first team being competitive, but its been a long time coming. At least now we have a boss who's job depends on success.

One other thing, please do not reinvent Furner as some kind of misunderstood genius. He was a terrible head coach, who got both his NRL and SL roles through his history of the clubs, and nothing at all to do with ability.

Re: Round 16| London Home : Sun Jul 07, 2024 11:02 am  

Whatever your views of Furner’s coaching ability, you surely cannot disagree that his summing up of the terrible state of our squad was bang on the money, but the powers that be chose to ignore his views

Re: Round 16| London Home : Sun Jul 07, 2024 11:12 am  

I'm not suggesting he was wrong if he thought the squad was dire. But a better, more respected coach would have found a way to manage the change required in the squad without pushing us into relegation.

For a second opinion, ask Raiders fans what they think of Furner as a coach. Its not good.

Re: Woeful performance against London : Sun Jul 07, 2024 1:00 pm  

Agree with the majority of the above , but not sure Walker and Grix could be trusted with the water bottles

Re: Round 16| London Home : Sun Jul 07, 2024 3:13 pm  

mattsrhinos1978 wrote:

As already mentioned, the mentality around this club is absolutely disgusting, its widespread and been going on for years. Yesterday shouldnt suprise anyone, coming off a half decent result, the useless puddings suddenly think they're the 82 Aussies.

They think they're better than they are, put their leeds tracksuit on, burn a few belongings, talk some absolute poop about personality colour schemes, hang JJB's poop metal Rhino on a wall and they think they've made it, just have to turn up against someone like London

Add in 3 god awful coaching hires in a row, influencing these players, recipe for disaster. Yesterday was Smith rugby in a bottle, why work hard and play physical and patient, when theres all these shortcuts you can try, his rebuild has been a total disaster.

Good news, atleast GH/the club seem to have finally woke up, relised the game has passed him by, relised being an ex player with no experience isnt the answer, and got someone with an actual CV and recent expierience of successfully building squads and hiring coaches, in to sort it out. So despite yesterday, im pretty excited for the future, by that i mean the rest of this season once Arther gets here, and next season with Blease getting hold of everything...No 5 year plans, in rugby terms, its an utter myth fed by incompetent people, everyone will say it, but the competent onces will do it in one or two.

Excellent post Matt

Re: Round 16| London Home : Mon Jul 08, 2024 6:59 am  

BTW I agree entirely that the next coach will assess the squad, and that Blease needs to be able to stop any player from running to mummy if they are told they need to improve or ship out.

My only question is how much weight/clout a temporary coach might have. Giving a view on every player ready for the next coach might be useful, but I'd doubt someone like Rowley who is in and around SL all the time wouldn't already have a strong view on our squad.

Or is it more about a temporary coach trying to energise the team to have a season end like 2022? Not sure how you do this unless the whole squad buys in from day one.

At least it'll keep interest in the season going - it already feels like this year's done and gone.

Re: Round 16| London Home : Mon Jul 08, 2024 11:51 am  

Arthur coming in and being a sort of "axeman" might actually be beneficial, would give more insight to next season