Thinking back to 2004, there was a massive hunger simply because it had been so long since we had won a championship.

The success that came in the wake of that year was never going to be sustained on an annual basis. The problem is *perhaps* that Leeds are big enough to endure a few seasons outside the play-offs because of our sound financial foundations, whereas most other SL clubs can't do this (the exceptions are clubs with big money backers like Warrington and Huddersfield). Saints and Wigan would surely be in a mess if they had flirted with relegation and regular poor league finishings in the way Leeds have done since 2015.

That said it's clear there is a hunger at the club, but perhaps also a greater degree of patience than those clubs that live on a more hand to mouth existence. I actually think the set-up looks as healthy as it has done since 2015. If we keep making incremental improvements to the playing squad while investing in younger players, we will get back to the top. But success often takes an almost obsessive drive and effort, and I'm not sure that is there at the club. It's also not clear from the outside whether structural changes behind the scenes are going to bear fruit after successive coaches have come and gone. Time will tell.

I think Chris makes some good points but look at Saints they also built a new stadium and have continued to produce competitive teams. They also had the break up of a golden generation/team when the likes of Sculthorpe, Long, Martin, Cunningham but still kept winning.

Lots of horsepower seems to go into the Foundation and is this a distraction from the playing side.

The club always spends to or very near to the cap so not having the money is not an argument. What is a worry is how the money is being spent. We all agree the squad is poor despite spending the cap. Who is making these decisions? The club seems so slow to react - compare Wigan's recruitment for next season to Leeds? How long did it take Saints to get a replacement for Lussik?

I have said it before it needs a director of rugby who controls all the rugby side, the structures, recruitment, academy, direction of travel. This is a key appointment the most important role in the playing side of the club. It needs to be a fresh face with fresh ideas and needs to be given a remit that can attract a quality candidate and left to get on with it.

The club needs a streamlining in the coaching/conditioning area especially in the academy. Fresh faces and fresh ideas.

IOff the field this is the best run rugby club in the UK - GH/Rob Oates do a great job especially given the dross that has been ditched up over the past few years.

https://www.insidermedia.com/news/yorks ... ial-income Asounds like the clubs pretty healthy off the field. Will that translate to investment on the field...

https://www.insidermedia.com/news/yorks ... ial-income Asounds like the clubs pretty healthy off the field. Will that translate to investment on the field...

I get the point about Saints stadium but it wasn't as big of an outlay and they didn't go into a lock soon because of a pandemic as soon as it opened. Their succession planning has been better than ours although it will be interesting in the next few years because they have a few very influential players retiring in the next couple of years.

Just on the conditioning part we have changed that last year I believe and to be fair, lack of fitness doesn't seem to be an issue with the squad.

The stadium thing is a distraction - we have marquee players and we are spending to the cap - not sure how the issues around the stadium impacted that unless its in the cost of the coach? Given what happened to Furner perhaps our choices are limited. We pay top dollar sadly we seem to overpay e.g. Tetevano, Merrin for these players.

We would be both very surprised if it takes Saints 7/8 years to make the transition from their current side to a new competitive one. They seem to have much more success with their signings from the NRL - perhaps Saints is more attractive proposition than Leeds these days.

We just don't seem sharp enough - how did Olpharts end up on a 3 year contract at Leeds. He is so good we play a second row forward in the centres than play him!! It is not as if he was an overseas player who couldn't settle - I know Cas is another world but!!

He’s not so good he got three years…. As he got 2

Only 2 - how did he ever get through the door!!

Just another thread descending into Olpherts bashing

Assuming coaches have some say on recruitment (which given Merrin, Lolohea and Hurrell signed under Furner is undoubtedly the case, as I doubt if any of them would have signed without his influence), I'd say the coaching appointments have been the biggest single problem, starting with letting McDermott continue running the squad into the ground for at least a year too long. We then picked Furner, who had red flags all over the place following his stint as head coach of the Raiders, and then Agar, who did a god job in the first instance but then overstayed to prove why he too isn't a top flight coach.

I'd also add that any decent head coach would not have allowed junior development to become the sideshow it did under McDermott, who never seemed to understand its importance.

One other thing is that our two most recent wins - the 2017 Championship and 2020 CC really hurt in the long run because they both hid some awful failings and meant we kept McDermott and Agar too long. That doesn't mean I'm not glad we won them, but I think GH was blinded by the glint of silverware and couldn't see what was just beneath the surface at the club.

Whether Smith is the right man for the job long term isn't yet clear, but nobody should forget the utter mess we were in just before he arrived. I hope he is, because if not we'll have to start all over again under someone else.

I think the key differences with ours and Saints' transitional period are, Saints got their coaching appointments bang on in Holbrook and Wolf, they also have had James Roby, Makinson, Walmsley, and Johnny Lomax as constants, which has has made their transition much more straightforward. So you can criticise Leeds' recruitment, but it's been our inability to produce our own young spine players that has been a much bigger issue. If you look at the most successful teams over the last 20 years, all of them have had a spine made up primarily of homegrown players. Homegrown players tend to take up less cap space than players recruited from outside the club.
So until we can produce our own spine players of the required quality, and they stay fit, we will struggle, because recruiting from outside is too expensive and won't leave you with enough cap space for other areas of the team.