Leeds Rhinos • Round 20 Salford away 3/8/24

I think the success he had straight off the bat in 2022 convinced him he'd found a new way to play the game - play rope-a-dope in defence and counter attack from anywhere on the field. It worked that year because we needed to fix our awful defence and was probably the only way that side had a chance to win games. As confidence built we took a lot of teams by surprise, and lets be honest it really did work that year.

Again just my opinion but I think he believed the problem last season were the likes of Austin and Sezer, and not the way we were trying to play. So the plan was a proper clearout for this year, and the problems that probably caused among the squad last season were just something that had to be lived with to make the changes he wanted.

I reckon he knew early this year he'd got things badly wrong but he'd built a squad to play that way and knew they couldn't try to play 'normal' rugby very well. I think that's why he kept on about the ruck needing to be cleaned up - he's right of course that it does need to be, but the helter skelter rugby will only generally work off quick PTBs. Without that its just hail Mary high risk plays and once opponents worked out how to play us - which really means playing basic RL themselves without panicking - we were cooked.

I quite like the guy and he seems pretty smart. To paraphrase though it seems he's not as clever as he thinks he is....