A tough start but hopefully it will force us to hit the ground running and not struggle as badly as last season.

I also notice that we have Catalans away, Magic Weekend and London away on consecutive weeks; a Friday night fixture after Easter; and for the third season in a row, we open and close with away matches. It's hardly the best draw for us in those respects.

I did have a look at something though having noticed that London play Catalans away in July - since Catalans joined SL London have had 1 June visit, 1 August visit, 1 September visit and 5 july visits. They take no fans so maybe that slot should go to teams that will take fans given decent weather. Just a thought.

There are only 3 ways this can be achieved due to the system of playing rounds. i.e Everyone plays or no-one plays, apart from backlog fixtures.

We take London's entire fixture list throwing out the derby weekends out of sync.
We take Wakefield's fixtures, who we are unfortunately inextricably linked with due to some people regarding it as our major derby game.
The last is dependent on the changing geographical location of new SL entrants.

Everyone knows it's Leeds.

Chile

It certainly is Leeds and definately not Wakey.

I regard both the Leeds and Wakefield games equally and are the first fixtures I look for when the fixtures come out.

i think it's time for a change in how the fixtures are formulated as this will be the 4th consecutive season that we have started and finished the season with away games. I very much doubt that any other team has had the same ill fortune or is that we are the least popular team in the league.

Catalans away, then Magic weekend followed by London away - now that is taking the pee.

Could be worse...we could be Hull KR and have a run of away games that go (after playing us at Wheldon Road on Sunday 5th May):

Hull FC (Magic weekend)
Catalans
St Helens
Warrington
Wigan
Leeds

Ouch!!!!

The teams are fed in to a machine in Canada and then that generates a fixture list for each team. These fixtures are then sent to the RFL for a once over to take in to account Sky, Challenge Cup, Magic Weekend etc. then they are sent back and re-done. Final draft goes to each club and then everything is done.

I think it is just unfortunate that we've got 3 away games on the bounce and start and end the season with away games.

Looking at HKR's fixtures above. I would rather be in our position than theirs

At the time of the season we're playing both Bradford away and Catalans at home, yes, I would class them as easier fixtures. Why is it better to get off to a good start? Did we not do that in 2011 and a poor end to the year cost us our place in the play offs + Wembley?

I put the failure to make the play offs down to injuries and a small squad and without the good start to the season we would never have been in contention for them, we took 15 points out of a possible 20. As for the semi-final defeat it was Leeds we were playing and not a bottom end team and i was well pleased we pushed them so close, did the teams in the Grand Finals also have bad ends to their seasons losing out to them each year.

I used to consider Leeds to be our big rivals, but to be honest I think that Leeds do not consider either of us rivals.
I think for a big game to be a big game it needs to be felt fervently on both sides.
For me Wakey v Cas and vice versa are our big games and more should be made of them.

On a theme...