Excuses for coach and players alike at elite level Rugby doesn't cut it for me someone needs to take ownership of the results so far 100% effort is none negotiable its that simple.

The nature of being underdogs is that you generally need to be not winning and playing poorly to get the moniker.

Some of the best GF winning Leeds teams have been underdogs - in 2007, 2008, 2011, 2012 etc - what's your point Flexwheeler? You do realise that good teams are not always expected to win, right?

The revisionism on this forum in the last few weeks really has been epic. We've been hearing that Furner would have been a better coach than Smith if only JJB hadn't complained and got GH and Sinfield to cut short his tenure, and now being an underdog is a sign of a team playing poorly. Jesus wept.

what's epic is people watching this garbage for 18 months and thinking smith is the answer

They were underdogs in one-off grand finals but on a week in week out basis they were favourites for a large portion of games. Guess who will be underdogs a lot this season? London and Hull, because they’re crap.

Your comparison is irrelevant, invalid, and frankly damn unhelpful as people continue to make comparison with yesteryear.

If you total up how many times Leeds went into a weekly round fixture during years they won the grand final as favourites and take an average, then take the same from Smith’s 18 months, guess what?

They’ll be underdogs higher percentage of the time under smith because they play poorly and lose, often. That was my point, you get the moniker of being underdogs by being crap, to put it bluntly.

Nice back-pedalling, but it doesn't disguise the fact that your definition of underdogs was deliberately narrowed to suit your anti-Smith agenda.

I'm not sure your hypothetical scenario is going to be as revealing as you think (I suspect neither of us has the time to quantify, but please do indulge yourself). In 2022 when Smith took over, Leeds were rightly underdogs in a lot of games, but we ended winning a lot more than was expected. In 2023 we actually started as favourites in a lot of games in the first part of the season because we had made the GF - many of which we lost, but not all. Your original comment about underdogs wasn't really as clever as you thought it was, and it's not really helpful to understanding what's going on at the club.

I will continue to bring up the past where it is relevant. Especially when it helps educate impatient doom-merchants that are turning people away from reading and contributing to this forum.