That triple step's probably required during the transition between the natural footwork I teach and the skippetty, hoppity, kickeddy footwork that some people teach.
When I started learning MJ in Brighton the LeRoc footwork was a ladies back left beat one followed by a skippetty, hoppity, kickeddy and tappety sort of footwork. I don't think Nigel based his RLRL in the open hand hold on anything taught by Brighton LeRoc - the only source he's mentioned to me is Bug. I had to agree with Nigel after observing what 99%* of female MJ dancers actually do on the dance floor.
At a dance I ran on Saturday night this was about 98.67% as two of the 150 ladies were doing the back left on beat 1 thing. They were both LeRoc Federation trained teachers (last week, when I visited her class to give her free tickets to a dance one of the pair told me off in a very stroppy and strident way about the way I teach the first move - apparently the LeRoc syllabus dictates that the lady first steps back left on beat one and the turn out/step back right is on beat 4 - my answer was that I understood that the LeRoc Federation accept that there's more than one way to dance MJ - apparently I'm wrong about that too).
On the subject of returns, I think these belong in beginners routines. They get people to practice turning and returning as well as all the other things people have said on this thread. I do leave out the returns if there's a turn to the left at the start of the next move - for instance the windmill. I teach a half-windmill as a beginners move: preceding it with a return would mean the lady turns 3 times in the same direction with only a back-step separating the first and second turns.
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