The thing you have to remember with the Aussies is that they don't have a Challenge Cup-style competition....Their Grand Final is their Wembley showpiece.

As I have said before, the play-offs are a good competition, but the lack of recognition for a team proving themselves over a 6 month competition, in comparison with the glory and praise a team winning a 4 game tournament receives, makes a mockery of our game.

The problem here is you have overlaid a football mindset onto Rugby League. Determining the champion team via a system of play-offs is a tradition in a game which requires teams to front up and perform under the ultimate mental pressures. It's melodramatic and incorrect to say it makes a mockery of our sport because football doesn't do it (how come the Champions 'League' doesn't just form into one big league rather than have a final?). Many in fact probably the majority of the champions of major non football sports leagues are determined through play offs.

That said, the top 8 is too much both in terms of showing up the shallow quality of the league and ensuring the play offs have only the elite contenders in them and a rethink surely has to come.

Is it not true that in the NRL the clubs don't play each other home & away in the regular seqason?
Hence an even more compelling need for a playoff system.
Whereas we just have the magic weekend.

Hi Jeff

You get a home game against the team finishing 4th (which you should be much better than apprantly), you get a week off if you win and you get to pick your opponent to play at home (again). If you lose the first game you get another chance, and play another team you are apprantly better than according to league position. So what you meant to say was a "4 game tournament against teams you have proven to be more consistant than over the season, with the odds and conditions stacked heavily in your favour". Pretty much every other team finsishing with those advantages made it to the final. What's your problem?

My main problem, is that you end a 6 month season on top of the table and then somebody decides to say stop, you've won feck all yet,you now have to take part in a totally new competition where some side who have just come into form in the last month, can come through, put together 4 wins and suddenly be proclaimed the best team in the league....It doesn't seem right.

Have the play-offs by all means, but let's be honest here, even you Leeds fans have accepted you have been distinctly average for most of the year, some of you even wanting your coaching staff hung, drawn and quartered, so to now have a situation where you will be 'champions' if you beat Saints, seems slightly awry.

Look at it this way - the regular rounds are simply the qualifying rounds for the play-offs. Forget the league Leaders or coming top, the higher up the the league you finish the more of an advantage you have in the play-offs.

Think of it a bit like the soccer World Cup, they spend months qualifying and the finals are virtually considered as a separate competition.

Change your mental approach to the regular rounds and the play-off system makes much more sense.

Thats exactly the point I made earlier in this thread, whether or not 8 teams in the play-offs is too many, there is always the chance that sides from outside the top two will make the GF, as Catalan nearly did in 2009, when they got to the penultimate stage before the GF from 8th place. It just the system we have, as someone has just mentioned above, if you work hard throughout the weekly rounds to maximise your chances in the play-offs, then blow it before OT, you can't really have a viable complaint.

Call the league leaders the 'champions'....and the grand final winners the 'grand final champions'. Simples

The weekly rounds are qualifying for the playoffs the higher up you are the more advantage you get in the play offs

Or simply dig out the old League Leaders Trophy (one hell of a beast from memory) from deep in the bowels of Red Hall (unless its been melted down) and award something for a long season's job well done to the team who finishes top of the league after the rounds.

Its simply about showing respect to any team who finishes in first position in the premier professional competition of one of the toughest sports in the world - unfortunately throughout rugby league, from players to coaches to administrators there is no respect shown.

I kind of agree with you to some extent - I wasn't trying to defend the play-offs, it's what we have. I was offering a different perspective to how they should be looked at.

Coaches will be aiming to peak at the end of the regular rounds so they are better prepared for the play-offs and to a lesser extent the actual league position isn't necessarily that important. A top 4 finish will do.

If more emphasis/reward were to be put on actually winning the league it would change the whole dynamic of they way coaches and players approach their league position.

How would reviving the League Leaders Trophy be any different to presenting the current League Leaders Shields???

Because the Shield looks like a refugee from the Salvation Army WWI crockery stock.

As much as finishing top is the accumulation of a season's efforts, the focus is, has been, and will continue to be the GF.

Good luck in the GF, I get the feeling it is going to be a classic.

i can-you running round manchester on a sat afternoon----tit---