M j M

I'd quite fancy Warrington in this one if Vaughan wasn't missing. The pressure is completely off them and that should work to their advantage and I think St Helens have a soft underbelly this year - and a lesser coaching set up. However without their best player though it's hard to see a Warrington win.

On this one: No, their fee is the main Sky payment, they don't get anything additional for appearing on Sky.

I've never understood why Pearson owns Hull. Or what his motivation to stay involved is. He's not particularly wealthy and he's not a longstanding fan as far as I know. Is he ultimately waiting for a wealthy buyer to come along and take it off his hands, giving him a profit on what he paid and refunding any loans he's personally put in?

Given crowds are a factor in IMG's spreadsheet exercise to what degree do we think some of these figures have been massaged...?

A great birthday present, surely?

With 15,109 there tonight Leeds are top of the most important league table once again

@Bedfordshire Bronco

Score is now 28-0

22-0 half time score.

15,000 wouldn't fit your current agenda then?

"Everybody's saying 'Go, go, go! And he goes!'" Every Rugby League fan should know this like soccer fans know Wolstenholme, but we simply don't celebrate our glorious history. Ray French's best was the Hanley "he's still going" one. These guys deservedly got criticism but they could on occasion summon up a memorable phrase in a memorable moment. Our current Sky commentators are more solid plodders but I don't think they can reach memorable heights.

I'll ignore the rest of this mess of a post but let's take a look at your wishful about the Leeds corporate market. The Big Corporates that Leeds are very strong in are very resilient and very bought into the long term. It'll take more than a couple of poor first team results to seriously undermine that. Smaller corporates/owner managed businesses may behave more like regular fans but your your doom mongering is likely to be largely misplaced there too.

I'd assumed Cas had offered him a deal for next year and that was contingent on them being in SL. Best way to ensure that was to get there ASAP.

Ron Barassi, AFL player and coach, who gave his name to the Barassi Line.

Don't believe what some Leeds fans say about Leeds not spending money, it's simply not true and repeating it is a distraction.

Leeds have been perplexing. They won away at St Helens and Wigan and beat Catalan at home. Then lost twice to Cas (albeit that's not unusual for any Leeds team) and gave Wakey their first win of the season. I clocked off for the season after the win at Hull and went on holiday (the plan as usual to be back in time for the play offs ). So I can't speak for the last two games but up til then the team were very frustrating - typically playing badly for most of a game, having a great purple patch and then allowing the opposition back into it. They were thus in almost every game to the death, losing most of them. Those purple patches and that fighting spirit were the things some of us were clinging to but it sounds like even they've gone walkies in the past two weeks. Notwithstanding the somewhat weakened teams, Leeds shouldn't be losing like that, ever.

Not sure we need yet another Leeds thread but on this point sections of the crowd may well be hostile (that doesn't take much) but there will still no doubt be a comfortable 13 to 14,000 there.

Sky didn't "buy" the game nor did they insist on any rules being implemented.

I'm on a long flight and bored so have looked through the old posts and can confirm this has worked for 64% of Leeds games this season Betting against the predictions on here with the same stake every week would have generated a healthy return.

Apart from the disaster in Round One the biggest Leeds defeat this season has been by 14 points. Whatever you say about them - that they are mistake prone, lacking in quality, inconsistent, passive in defence, play like they've never met each other - one thing they haven't done under Rohan Smith so far is lie down and take a beating. And they almost always win when the totalrl match poll says they will lose and lose when it says they will win. *(past performance is not a guarantee of future results).

Why should I make things up? Would it upset the apple cart if Leigh had an academy, and please give me a good reason why they should not have one. This thread is literally nothing to do with Leigh no matter how hard you try to introduce the subject.

I remember buying my first edition of League Express, i've still got it somewhere, it was edition four or five, something like that. It was an instant hit with me. My English teacher at school was a big Hull fan and wrote the Hull home game match reports in the paper for many years. Which was good fun in a school in Leeds - except for the time John Gallagher dropped that bomb in the '91 Premiership semi. Some things you can't joke about

Leeds by 12.

I think there's a bit of BS going on here. There's a difference between Hetherington striking a hard bargain (which is legendary across the game) and Leeds not spending. The club budgets full cap and uses all marquee spots. The aim of Hetherington being tight is supposed to drive more out of the cap - not save on total spending. Now it may be his frugality isn't working when trying to sign players any more. But Leeds will continue to have funds available and it's just not true that the club is trying to save money on the playing squad. I'm pretty sure we will see that this includes a willingness to to spend big on transfer fees, something which has been a constant through the Caddick/Hetherington era.

Leeds are not struggling financially.