Indeed, but they rarely put the top sides against each other 1st game up

Obviously you've used your fc back catalogue of the last ten games against Leeds to advise us on how to beat them

Con always fancied himself as a 5/8, and it's a Knights thing that playmakers spend a lot of time working on 20 and 30 metre passes - watch Scotty Dureau for instance - but a couple of guys named Ryan Stig and Jono Ford were team mates of Mika and those guys can drill a 30 metre pass in their sleep (Jono is halfback for the Cook Islands and Newtown - 'the Stig' is second choice halfback for the Knights).

Is it only 10?

Anyway, chapter 1 in the richard agar guide to coaching is "whatever you do, make sure you lose to the bosses team"

Never ceases to amaze me how poor the passing skills are of seasoned pro who earn significant sums for playing rugby

My take on the game is we were very competetive for most of the game, showed some good passages of play and our forwards were on top for long periods in the first half and with a bit more composure (which should come after a few games of playing as a team) we could have scored a few more. Regarding the penalty count, leeds did hold down as long as what we did, it just looked neater and less of a struggle than some of ours so more unlikely to get penalised.
What bugged me about bentham was his eagerness to stop the clock and hurry up our drop outs but allowed brent webb to throw the ball away and wait 30 seconds before stopping the clock, while also things he pulled up as knock on's in the wigan friendly were ok in a super league game.

He didn't affect the winners as leeds proably edged it over 80 mins but I feel 18 points flattered. My view of leeds is they looked a better team when Peacock was off the pitch and Burrow looked sharp but think a few more teams will attack there right side this year. Good game to watch, both teams will go well this year if that was anything to go by and the game as a whole does not deserve Bentham been the main talking point.

It will be interesting if hall continues to impress at 6, when green comes back, would sandercock consider dropping murrell and playing hall/green at 6 and 13 as this could be one way of getting the best out of both players however that appears to be a long way in the future so onwards to Wakefield and feel that we should avenge last years defeat after watching there game back on sky.

Green at 13 would work well IMO if Hall is doing the business at 6 but your right, it looks a long way off before we come across that scenario.

We played well, I was impressed with the speed in which we shifted it around and the sliding defence has improved greatly. Bentham was inconstant in his decisions and played to the home crowd at times (it happens at times), which an experienced top ref should not fall for. One thing I did notice, when we defended the west terrace end we were given a tap 20m restart and the ball was thrown to Welham to take a quick tap, Bentham shout 'wait' and WALKED back into position giving the Leeds defenders ample time to line up, but when the roles reversed he was like a greyhound out of a trap and allowed Leeds to get a quick tap in and make some good meters.

All in all, if the penalty count had been the other way I am sure we would have edged them.

Let's be honest, we've all gone to a SKY game and come away convinced that the ref was massively against us, only to see that maybe tehy weren't when we watch teh game back the next day

Stuck together two images as it panned the crowd at the end of the game. Well done to everyone who made the journey. At this point as I remember many people had left on the hooter. So their was even more at the game