I agree, Leeds have turned up in big semi's and finals (including last years CC) and either won or gone down with a real fight in the last 10 year to give me hope for Saturday.

Whilst the game is against more difficult opposition for 4th, that is mitigated by the massive advantage of that game not being a knock out game.

I would ask why, if finishing top in our uneven season, is such an achievement and such a barometer of relative quality, the team finishing top needs such an advantage and why they need to make it so much more difficult to win it from lower down.

Leeds beat, 8th, 4th, and 1st to get to the grand final, thats a pretty tough run, and much tougher than Warringtons run which would have beating beating 4th and 5th, and Wigans run which would have been beating 3rd and 6th.

5th isn't automatically 'easy', if Huddersfield had beaten Warrington in the first week (which wasn't the mission impossible some are making it out to be considering the Giants had won 2 of the 3 league meetings between the two teams that season, as well as winning at Halliwell Jones in the 2010 playoffs) then Leeds' playoff route would of looked like this....
- Hull @ Home
- Warrington Away
- St Helens Away..........Saints would of had Clubcall and most likely would of picked us over Wigan.
- GF vs Wigan/Hudds

That is incredibly tough going away to Wire and Saints followed by a possible GF against Wigan, what stopped that happening was Hudds usual poor end of season form. So what do we do? Change the playoff format just to factor in Huddersfield's expected playoff crumble?
As for the Giants having to play this tougher game in Week 1, haven't people been saying of late that England won't beat the Aussies because we don't play enough tough or intense matches? A wake up call beating from Wire should of been a kick up the backside for the following week compared to Leeds having a stroll against Hull when they hardly had to get out of 2nd gear.
Leeds did have a fairly comfortable passage to reach the Warrington game but that's because of the attitude of some of the teams in the playoffs and not the structure of the thing.

Personally I'm not trying to say what Leeds did last year was "easy" by any means and I'm not trying to take anything away from the acheivement. You still had to go to a red hot Wire team and then beat Saints in the final. I was simply highlighting that there are too many aspects of the playoffs I don't like.
- There is no real discrepency between finishing 1st and 2nd
- 5th and 6th get "on paper" easier home games in week one than either 1st or 2nd
- Likelihood of repeat fixtures in week 3
- Too many teams in the first place

There was a massive difference between 1st and 2nd last year. 1st were at home to a s**t-out Huddersfield, 2nd were at home to eventual runners up Saints. Big difference. The difference is variable dependent on how closely matched the top 4 are, but you might generally assume that 3rd will be better than 4th.

Certainly Wigan lost their match while Wire won theirs. I would have expected Wigan to beat Huddersfield at home pretty comfortably.

Bottom line is, Huddersfield would have flopped in the play-offs whatever the format. Had they won (somehow) at home to Hull in week one and Leeds lost at Wire in Week one, Leeds would still have been a better side at that stage of the season.

If i was in charge

top 6

Week 1

3v6
4v5

Week 2

1vthe lowest team still in
2vthe other team

final

Job done