And his preseasons were from a very different era were the warm down was probably spent in the pub. RL, fitness, sport science etc. has moved on a lot since then.



Like I said we started 3 weeks later than usual and others teams whose season didn't last as long as ours will have started even earlier. At this level you can't be a month behind your competitors and expect everything to be fine.

Fair points.



We will never know for sure, but there is also the chance that there was a fair bit of complacency that had set in after the treble year we had just had and that a feeling of 'everything will be ok we are the best team in the comp'.



Like others have said, i can buy into the floods setback for the first couple of months or so as a valid reason for performance and fitness levels being below where they should be, but that doesn't really wash when things are getting even worse mid summer. If we are brutally honest, if it wasn't for the arrival of Segeyaro we wouldn't have finished above the bottom two and we would very much have been a candidate for the MPG.

Completely agree with this.



As much as a T**t he is over how he left us, we have to be grateful he bothered to come over for his UK holiday as without him I daren't think of how much worse things could have ended up last season

^ This.

Are you seriously suggesting the difference between the best and worst sides is 1%!! I would suggest the gap is far bigger than that - the for and against suggests that 1% is miles off the difference.



The quality of training facilities at some SL clubs would have been far worse than those that Leeds ended up with so I don't buy that as an excuse. I would be very surprised if Leeds couldn't find appropriate facilities in the city very quick - maybe they wanted to keep the cost down and that delayed matters. I go to a gym Brains & Brawn in Morley that has a huge matted area and countless machines that Leeds could have used for weights, wrestle training etc. If you go on a Saturday morning you will see a number of current and ex RL players using those facilities.



Leeds had no excuse for lack of fitness there were plenty of options post the floods - they probably knew the squad lacked depth and would struggle to be competitive, the floods came as ready made excuse which they milked to the hilt.

How many businesses would give up their facilities that regular clientele use for a quick buck for a few weeks. If Leeds tool over Brains and Brawn for their sessions, you can guarantee that regular members would cancel their membership and seek alternative gums that would meet their requirements.

[url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qyy13r8m094[uSchoey V Hetherington's Budgie & JJB[/u[/url



Those annoying tanned mincers!

You're aware of the term 1%ers in elite sports? Or maybe reference to inches in any given Sunday? These differences in every player in every facet of the game is a huge difference. The margin for error between making a pass or completing a tackle or controlling the ruck or catching the ball... repeatedly over 80 minutes. If you think it's 20% + the scores would be closer to 50 difference every week.

if people have to respond to william can they stop polishing turds please



segys jet lag and home sickness should have affected him more than a bit of water pre season



we had injuries so did wigan



we lost leaders but that's shown up lack of leadership off the pitch

Key part "ended up with", again once the time is lost you can't get it back. It doesn't matter if the quality of the training facilities after that were better than some other clubs.







Just because you think it should be quick to find adequate doesn't make it so. Have you had to find training facilities at such short notice for a full SL team? How do we know if Yorkshire Carnegie weren't given first dibs on places that came available as they were in season? It's a fact that in very early days the squad weren't even going to the gym as a whole group and they were going in small groups to various gyms depending on their location. Also the staff have managed to get us to peak so often at key part of the season because they plan so well. They'll have had preseason plans which had to be condensed because of the later start anyway, you then lose your training facilities and those plans go to c0ck and you have to try squeeze in training when the few facilities are free and not necessarily when you would ideally do the things you planned.







You used that last line in 2011 mid way through the season accusing the club/GH of knowing they were going to be poor and that got shown up for the ridiculousness of it thinking they entered a season thinking they were going to struggle.

Seth and Printer make some valid points that I agree with and I think the players and coaches that won the treble only the previous season deserve the benefit of the doubt given the number of serious problems they faced. However there are those that choose to think ill of the club and coach and will continue to do so no matter what.

I think that's fair. We only have an issue if we don't learn anything from last year, including dealing with issues like mass injuries if we are that unlucky again. And while fans can point at Mac saying all the right things about not playing injured players, or conversely pointing at our toothless boxing day display and saying we're going to be craptastic in attack again (depending on which camp you're in, even if it shouldn't be that black and white), we won't know whether lessons have been learnt until 4-5 games into the season.



Benefit of the doubt until then imo.

Personally I think the idea that a pro sports team, with FULL TIME pro 'athletes' was neither able to organise anything for the squad or that individual players couldn't find places to go to work on basic fitness for months to be utterly ridiculous. Its not like the players had to find places to go to fit in with their day jobs - this IS their day job.



I can accept a week or so of being disjointed, but any half decent organisation should have been able to sort these things out. If you're saying they didn't and were consequently unfit, then the blame rests squarely with the management for not sorting things out, and with individual players for taking the p*ss.



I simply don't accept this as a valid excuse for last year. A far more valid one - and probably much closer to the honest truth - is a mixture of complacency having done the treble and completely underestimating the impact of the loss of Sinfield in particular.

No one has said it was months before they sorted out quality places to train.







Good because that's exactly what I've been saying, a week or so.

If that's the case why does anyone raise it as an excuse at all? Like the coach. And GH. And the players. And many posters.

I think there are plenty of valid points & ?'s raised wrt the abject failure to adapt learn & respond early enough to what the Club faced but then there are those who think the Coach could swollow coal & sh#* a diamond it works both ways given the dross served up on a regular basis.

As for benefit of the doubt who decides the terms of that or how long that should be allowed?

We are less than 6wks away now so we'll soon see & as your keen to keep harping back to the past no matter how recent that past points to a Coaching set up not learning anything wrt Squad management ,selection & having enough nous to adapt to injuries as they occur.

there are also posters who simply choose to be contrary and can't be stupid enough to believe what they post.



this coming season will answer a lot of questions.



has Hetherington let the squad slide quality wise?

is BM a decent but lucky coach or is he top class?

have lessons of last year really been learnt?

will the older players have it in them to have one last great season or was it a mistake not replacing them?



intriguing season ahead for all sorts of reasons

Given the lack of changes to the squad, those questions are precisely the ones that will be answered. Maybe in respect to some of them that's what GH is looking for?

Because those weeks lost added to the later start to preseason, you don't get back. Too many seem to think training is training and don't know the difference between preseason training and in season training. You can't be doing the fitness work you do in preseason when you're in season. Why do you think whenever a young player bulks up its during the off season.

Excellent post.

Answers - yes - somewhere inbetween but his time has gone - no - no and yes.



I really hope to be proved wrong

I like to think I'm not a cynic, and I do think all the disruptions of last year in preseason will have had an affect on those 1 per needed to be a top side.



But the thing that worries me is our injury crises last year. Yes it was massive and unlucky, but we simply didn't have the players waiting in the wings to step up a do a job. And I feel this year our squad is even weaker than this time last year having now lost Zak as well and not replaced him.



As far as I can see over the last two years we've lost (key players):



Sinfield

Peacock

Leuleui

Ailton

Hardaker



And replaced with

Aston/Lilley/sutcliffe

Galloway

garbutt/ Ormondroyd

Parcel

Golding



Which for me is a significant drop. I also feel players like Walters at 21 should be starting to step up now as a competent squad player but for me he's still just making up numbers. Surely it's time for baldwinson to be given a chance as well.



But what I really worry about is our lack of quality in positions 1,6,7,9 and 14. I believe mags, burrow and parcel are still (or potentially) top quality. I also think sutcliffe could be a top SL player. But one injury and I think we're struggling. In important positions. You can carry a poor second row in the squad, but a full season with Golding at FB? Let's hope he steps up and massively improves on last year. Which I'm sure he is capable of doing.



This for me is why Leeds who are a team with heavy reliance on a good number of "superstars" but because of salary cap have a fairly small squad and rely on players too young to fill big positions will do worse in a season than a team like castleford or Wigan who are a lot more balanced and have strength in depth if an injury crisis comes along. Though if Leeds can keep injury free then it leads to spectacular viewing such as the 2015 season and style of play.



If 2016 showed us anything, strength in depth is now key to being a top side with the amount of games there are in super league.



For what it's worth I think Leeds will clinch 6th this season. Which for me is ok in a period of transition.

No, I think they really are that stupid.







Brilliant. I can't wait.

What you seem to be saying is the club actually planned for failure.



If the floods only disjointed matters for a week - which is what you have posted - and that was the week between Xmas and the New Year then that should have been recoverable. The real issue was the late start to pre-season which was planned between GH. and his Head Coach i.e. planned for failure.



Alternatively the flooding caused far greater disruption which if that is the case then the agility of the management team has to be seriously questioned?

There are loiners on here that are really that stupid





The conundrums of 2017 will make or break a few people's positions at the club - should be an interesting season