To be fair Mark Calderwood is as much as a Leeds lad as Scott Donald as both of them weren’t born in this city. But lets not get postcode petty here





Well we’ll never know how much these two got paid and I’d be more than happy to leave it at that.

Just to be a pedant but Calderwood is one of them there Londoners and not really a Leeds lad.

Did he eventually win a contract with Quins for this year then?

Still there on a trial basis.

Tvoc.

Brad Godden wanted to stay but Leeds signed Senior now i may be wrong but i seem to remember Godden saying as such but he was'nt offered a deal.

Now as with Innes and Godden i was sad to see both leave especially Godden who was one of the best centres i personally have seen in the Blue and Amber but we ended up with Big Keith and as much as it hurt to see Brad depart i would'nt swop the service we've had out of Senior for an extra 2yrs out of him.

Donald may well have been 'average' in the NRL (although his strike rate compares favourably with many 'better' NRL wingers), but no 'average' winger would have scored his 2007 GF try. I doubt Calderwood would have either. Those kind of moments are what watching sport's all about.

Calderwood scored his share of breathtakingly good tries also (the hand-grenade try at the JJB springs to mind here where there was an audible gasp from the Wigan faithful as he stuffed their full-back) and on the biggest stage in our domestic game he almost single handedly shut out Bradford's biggest threat in the '04 GF. He ran the legs off Vainikolo with his kick chase, aided by the pinpiont accuracy from Sinfield's boot obviously.



Whether Calderwood would or wouldn't have beaten Wellens with an acre of space and Webb as a decoy I think is arguable (I'd suggest he would have) but I definitely saw no evidence in Donald's Leeds career that he could have bottled Leslie up quite so effectively.



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I know you are technically correct but as he was also a product of the Leeds Amateur Leugues (Stanningley ARLFC) prior to joining the Leeds Academy I'm claiming adoptive rights on behalf of the city.

For whatever reason I think you're downplaying Donald's ability.

For at least half his time here,I think the only person who didn't match up to Donald's abilities was Scott himself. A couple of truly outstanding tries simply illustrates that particular point.



I thought he was also a reserve player for the latter part of his NRL career?......and he certainly performed like one for his first 18 months here.

He has a man crush on Jodie Broughton.

You see in his latter years I wasn't a fan of Scott Donald and thought he was here at least one season too many.



But your comment about his first 18 months is just wrong. There was nothing different to how Scott Donald played then and how Scott Donald played in his super league dream team years. The only difference was the specific stat of tries scored, and that in the main was effected by his centre partner. Too many people are influenced by that stat rather than the individual performance. Scott put in 3 seasons of good performances for us.



My own opinion always was and always will be that Calderwood would have matched and exceeded anything that Scott Donald did for us, but was not afforded that opportunity, and in that respect I agree with all that tvoc has put, except about Broughton. But then the club had to go for the next best thing, and I presume that was Scott Donald.

I agree with most of your post Gotcha but Calderwood was afforded the opportunity, at the price we deemed him to be worth. His valuation of his worth was higher, as was Wigans. During his Wigan years we won three championships and he and they won none. We were succesful without him. We likely would have been succesful with him but, so what?

My opinion has never been greatly influenced by stats, which can always be interpreted in a variety of ways anyway. I have always preferred to base my views on what I see before me on the rugby field. To be honest, I can't remember Donald even playing for us in 2005, and I sat there in the North Stand for the better part of the 2006 season, wondering just when our Aussie chum was going to join in with the rest of the squad.



In 2007 and 2008 we got our money's worth, but I recall him being caught out of position many times in his Leeds career, and I still don't buy into the idea that it was down to whoever was playing inside him at that time. 2010 can be written off due to injury and early retirement, so I suppose it would be fairer to judge him over a 4 season period, where he would fare a bit better.



My overall impression of Scott Donald, irrespective of whether, with the benefit of hindsight we should have kept another, younger leeds prospect, is that we could have seen a cracking player on the wing for all of his time here, and sadly, we were shortchanged.