Who's on the receiving end of this payoff?

Did they change the name of the Play-offs to payoffs when it became an 8 team contest?

Ok… for those who don’t know how the Payoff system works.

The Team that come top doesn’t have to make any payoff and has the choice of ref for their next game
The 2nd team have the choice of which of the remaining refs.
Third team can chose their ref from the remaining pot OR they can offer a Payoff (sometime referred to as a ‘backhander’) to chose the ref that the 2nd team chose and also allocate another ref of their choosing to team 2 – the ref chosen by the first team is safe.
The team who came forth can then choose any remaining refs OR offer a bigger payoff than team 3 but if they do chose the payoff option they do not know how big a payoff was offered by team 3 so have to try and trump it – failer to offer a bigger payoff will result in having Silverwood.

Simples

Class!

well we know the rfl is on GH's payroll, so it is kind of apt.

Leeds will win every payoff game every year as they have done since the war, for as everyone from every hick town east or west of our city knows, Leeds are the wealthiest, most Jewish, most despised club in the RFL, its just so, it comes with the territory, we poach talented young players from local clubs, we bribe referees, we ARE the RFL, we pay four times the wages that other clubs pay and we offer prostitutes on demand to our rising young stars, maybe I shouldn't have mentioned the prostitutes.

Sorry Play offs........................ and these assumptions are after the elimination rounds

Christ, where to start with you!

Firstly, does that even look like a likely top 4 order at the moment... not to me! Any of the top three could finish in 1st but I suspect that the number one slot is out of reach from 4th spot down.

So, lets look at a more likely order, given current positions -

Wigan
Warrington
Saints
Leeds (Sorry Hull!)

So top half play-off week 1 is Wigan v Leeds & Warrington v Saints. Wigan (as the top side) only get to pick their week 3 opponents if they beat Leeds in week 1. If they lose, the whole thing about picking anybody goes out the window and it is only the team in 1st that ever get to chose if they get directly through to week 3... you got that, good!

So lets say Wigan win at home week 1, they go through to week 3 and get to chose who they play... but whom? Well they can chose anybody they like other than the side that also win in the top half of the table (so in our example, not Warrington or Saints) in week 1!

...tvoc is right... lets leave this for play-offs... I will just have to do this all again then anyway!

Not wishing to upset you but also not wishing to miss the very rare opportunity to catch you out... in a nice way of course!

Wigan could pick Warrington (based on Thingly Rhinos predictions for final four) if of course Wigan win and Warrington lose in Week 1. Warrington have to come the long way round and could get picked by Wigan for week 3 semi!

I am not sure now whether I feel smug or a little dirty for doing this to you!