ABW.

You do realise that Warrington begins with the letter "w" also?
Or do you want the winners name to begin with "S" or "C"?

If Catalan win it from 7th does that vindicate the top 8 playoff system or simply prove that the regular season is taken as a joke by most clubs? Alternatively if the team finishing 7th wins it does that mean that Stupor League is as $h!t as some people think?

I think a win from Catalan would cause the most hilarity so I am crossing my fingers and my toes for a Cats, Warrington final, with Warrington having a meltdown and the Frenchmen being crowned Champions after only winning 14 out of 27 regular season matches.

If Wigan won not a single match in the next 10 years I would still see that as overachieving.

However many you have in a play-off system, it remains the wrong way to decide the Champions IMO. It puts the focus on a small number of games at the end of the season, which are too easily influenced by officiating errors, lucky bounces or one-off poor performances. And yes, I'm aware of its history within the sport thanks before anyone pipes up with that argument.

Scrap the "Magic" weekend, have a balanced fixture list where everyone plays each other twice and the top team at the end is crowned champions. If you still want some knock-out drama to finish the season, bring back the Premiership. The rest is just pointless window-dressing.

A 5th V 7th Grand Final would be a fitting tribute to a play-off system which has been tarnishing the credibility of the game since 2009.

Albeit lucrative window dressing. Not easy to generate an alternative source of income were we to go down the above route.

How lucrative is a crowd of 7,000 at Headingley, once running costs, staffing etc for home games is taken into account? Likewise the crowd Huddersfield got against Catalans?

The likes of Salford and London should be grateful they didn't make the top 8. it would have cost them money to stage a home playoff game.

Can't wait for Huddersfield to stage an expanded WCC game next season. And if there's a power outage affecting the electronic turnstiles, they may be able to claim an attendance of 6,900 just like they did on Friday against Catalan.

They'd be better off begging Leeds to stage it instead.

I thought better of you

..Hudds can't offer Leeds a game if Leeds are already lined up as one of the 4....probably against Brisbane

Catalans getting through to the final potentially messes up the planned quartet of Saints, Wigan, Warrington & Leeds the RFL (and GH) were banking on

All the more reason to cheer on les Catalans

Let's take an guesstimate average price of a ticket is £15, that would make over £100K. I don't think the running costs would be above that. Unless we're employing minor celebrities as stewards.

Leeds (formally a big club but now seemingly happy to be mediocre) produced the lowest crowd among the opening four fixtures so perhaps not representative of the finances involved.

Talk of cost doesn't factor in the TV money for showing the game on sky which is the main reason the season is how it is, because of the sky dollar

Presumably there's TV money too? And I was thinking more of the final; I doubt the prospect of a premiership win without the accolade of champions would draw anything like the crowd that the current version does.