But that isn't the case though is it?

All the teams are striving to finish as high as they can. The do value it, it's just the value it in perspective.

Rugby League has, aside for a very brief period in it's history, decided it's champions this way. I suspect the majority of Rugby League Champions throughout the sports entire history have not finished first in the league table.

No, that makes finishing first in the qualifying competition relatively meaningless. What effects the entire season isnt the lack of reward for the 1 or 2, possible 3 sides who would contest 1st place, its the fact that the 2nd team of the team in 1st can score 33 points against the team in 11th. Its that Leeds can put out a 2nd team with players all out of position and beat castleford, its that St Helens can have their worst season in probably more than 20 years and they are still comfortably better than a third of the league.

We bring up the standard of the bottom and we narrow the gap, so that the difference between first and 9th is ten points rather than 20, the difference between 14th and 8th is 5 points rather than 14, and then, every game means something because if you dont win, you dont qualify for the play-offs.
If the difference between top and out of the play-offs is only 5 wins instead of 10, and the difference between bottom and play-offs is 3 wins instead of 6. Then everyone, all season long, will have more to play for.

Why is finishing 1st less of a reward now?

In a 5/6 team playoff they would have to face the 2nd place team at home (followed more than likely by playing 3rd or 4th at home if they lost). Now they have to beat the 4th place team at home followed by a team ranked anywhere from 4th to 8th.

For all the talk in the past about Leeds' great 2004 season, it effectively became meaningless as soon as we lost to Bradford in the Playoffs and became the '2nd Placed' team to reach the final.

I can also recall claims that the new top 8 system made it TOO EASY for the top 2 in 2009 when Leeds needed to only beat HKR & Catalans to reach the GF. People also didn't like to see the GF being a re-match of what took place 2 weeks earlier, which it often did under 5/6 teams with 1st vs 2nd usually reaching the GF. This would kick up a bit of fuss and "making the sport look bad" if the team who lost the first game went on to win the GF re-match and more "how can they call themselves the best?"

You're right. It is fairly easy for the top 2 if they turn up and perform, and if they don't have to get past Leeds of course.

Exactly, the margins under which we've not seen 1st vs 2nd in 2012 (Jack Murphy dropping a bomb) and 1st vs 3rd in 2011 ( Myler getting caught offside) are so small that when people make out that the Top 8 is too unfair on top teams and kind on bottom teams a laughable claim. Two individual errors have been the difference between the record of Top 8 GF's looking like this

2009 - 1st v 2nd
2010 - 1st v 2nd
2011 - 1st v 3rd
2012 - 1st v 2nd

And as I said before, how is the top 8 format less kind to the team finishing 1st? This is the route they've had to take

2009 - home vs 4th & 8th
2010 - home then away to 4th
2011 - home vs 4th & 5th
2012 - home vs 4th and 5th

That looks much better than having 2nd place visiting you as in 5/6 playoffs, no games against anybody higher than 4th. All that has happened is Leeds have been involved in the majority of them and have shown up more than others in those games (5 wins from 6). If someone would've said 5 or 6 years ago that the 1st placed team only had to beat teams around 4th and 5th place, people would've complained it was too simple for them.

Basically Wigan and Wire had a great chance to reach the GF in the last 2 years and blew it, and I'm not buying "they took the regular season more seriously, hence couldn't get up for the Playoffs" as any kind of excuse. Despite their below par performances at times by Leeds they would keep with the same players more than any other of the contenders (its been the major gripe on SouthStander about lack of rotation) and we were involved in more games where we had to keep going for the full 80 unlike the other 2 who could often take their foot off the gas after 40/50 mins played. If any of the 3 teams (Leeds, Wigan, Wire) were fatigued heading into the last 2 Playoff series it was Leeds.....the difference was they looked much more hungrier for the title than the other 2....but I guess its easier to claim a flawed playoff system rather than the team didn't have the fight in them when it came down to the deciding moments.

As alluded to, the format of league placings is not the issue. The issue is that the players in the other teams just haven't had that big game mentality that the Leeds team has shown.

1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6, 7th or 8th the games are played by 13 men versus 13 men at any one time on a piece of grass and the outcomes are decided by the players, not maths. Our players have just been better than everybody else's players when it mattered most of the time these last 9 years.

And that's what sport is all about. That's why we love it.

I find your logic counter intuitive. Leeds have 'big game mentality' yet they can't win the Challenge Cup. Wigan beat Leeds on the way to the GF in 2010, beat Leeds in the CC in 2011 and yet because we lose (without our best player) in the play off last year we lack 'big game mentality'. Warrington beat Leeds in the CC final come 2nd in the league to your 5th and yet they lack 'big game mentality'?

You are looking at an outcome, using 20/20 hindsight and ascribing meaning to something that is almost, I say Almost, random. To me last year there was little to choose between Wire and Wigan as the best team in the league, with Leeds close behind and yet Leeds are the Champions

Ever read Catch-22?

Winning the challenge cup and the GF is very difficult. Only one team has done it since the move to august and they did it in a year nobody else was any good. The league was that poor that season Hull managed to finish 2nd and get to a GF without ever really looking like challenging.

Its no coincidence that teams who win the CC have struggled to get up for the play-offs and GF. Saints in 04 didn’t even make the GF, Hull in 05 got 71 points put on them, Saints in 07 received the 2nd worst GF defeat, lost again in 08. Wire in 09 didn’t even qualify, in 10 they were comfortably beaten by Sts, in 2011 Wigan were beaten twice by Saints in the play-offs, in 2012 Warrington fell at the final hurdle to Leeds.

It is tough for any side to peak for two months, or twice in two months. Leeds have said before that they work on monthly cycles. It leaves them with a choice, either amend that training schedule so that they are peaking at the time of the CC final and then hang on and hope they last through to the GF to give them the best chance of the CC, or stick to their cycle and try to win the CC whilst not at their optimum level but give themselves the best chance of the GF and that doesn’t even address the mental and emotional aspects of trying to peak twice in such a short period.

Of course the Wigan and Warrington players have shown big game mentality on occasion, just not as consistently as the Leeds players have over the last 9 years.

And please stop with the silliness about Tomkins and the playoff game. IIRC he played in the Challenge Cup Semi Final when we beat you last year, not to mention the fact that we had a player missing as well.

Was that Danny McGuire - the well known big game specialist or some other random?



It's 8 to 7 in favour of the team's finishing top during the SL GF Era

Prior to that I'm not entirely sure because of the comps held during the 'at war' years but from the tables I've seen printed in the Leeds Rugby League Story by Dave Callaghan it comes out as a 28 to 27 win for the teams not finishing top - so 35 each from what I can see but I stress there are some gaps that may need addressing.

You are selectively leaving out the two defeats to Saints in the 2011 playoffs - what happened to Wigan then? To suggest a team that has not only made it to 5 out of the last 6 GF's but won them all doesn't have a big game mentality or that those results, or the victories required to get to those finals are in some way a "random" outcome is rather silly.

But we had won the Challenge Cup and no team has as yet done the Cup and Superleague double under the present eight team format.

And Leeds lost in that final. The way the two sets of players responded to their respective experiences that day says much.

So why haven't Leeds responded in the Challenge Cup?