As a Warrington fan, I agree with most of what is being said in this thread with regards to the play offs - The rules are set and teams have to abide with those rules, despite seeming to be unfair to some. Certainly, if we had won on Saturday, then I'd have quite happily proclaimed ourselves as champions, even though we finished second in the regular season.

However, I do have reservations about the play off system in its present format and with the teams involved - I really worry that the present system encourages mediocrity, in that certain sides (Leeds & Wire being two of them) realise they can coast for the majority of the season and still finish in a strong position for the play offs. While this is perfectly valid tactic for those sides who can afford to do this, I'm not sure its the right thing for the game in general, at a time when we are looking to encourage supporters to follow our sport, we are actually putting on a sub standard product for people to watch.

The main problem is not the play offs as such, but the quality of the league - Even now, most people can predict the top 5 or 6 sides in the league for next season. Simply there is too much of a gap between the good sides and the also rans....For the play offs to work properly and produce a champion that most people would accept without complaint, it needs a stronger league, where sides are being pushed most weeks, instead of the present situation, where certain teams are coasting.

Personally, with the state of our game at the moment and the quality we have (or lack of), I would probably prefer to see a 10 team league, with a top 5 play off....Of course, that's probably for another discussion, but with 10 strong sides and little or no makeweights, it would cut out occasions like Wire had at London this year in the week before Wembley, where Tony Smith came as close as you can to actually throwing a game.

Hope I haven't ranted too much, but just thought I'd throw my view into the ring....Congrats again on the win, just ignore (or laugh at) the Wiganers, a more jealous or arrogant bunch you are unlikely to find....

But...

Even in a perfect league you will always have at least two whipping boys and two teams who you'd put the house on finishing in the top four - the real question is how do you then move from the current situation to a place where an outsider might look at the league and think that it APPEARS to be a very competitive league where any random team can beat another on any given weekend and in doing so thinks that it must be a competitive league and one worth watching ?

If the likes of Leeds are coasting some of the rounds, and the accusors all seem to think that they do, then does this not benefit the league as a whole in giving the impression that the league is more competitive than we know it actually is ?

Is there a benefit to letting two teams beat everyone every week and the only time that the league table is decided is when they play each other - because thats how it used to be when only two teams were anything like full time pro ?

Yes you've read it here first - Leeds are doing the RFL a promotional favour by taking their foot off the gas during the summer months

Especially by finishing fifth instead of fourth - expect Tony Smith to have made notes this year.

Why are some people acting like Leeds meant to lose so many games in the weekly rounds? I'm sure they tried to win every game but weren't good enough on the day. Do some really believe that getting leathered by Wigan at home and losing to an out of form 10 man Hudds team was part of some master plan? I also don't understand how anyone can see we've 'managed our resources well'. How? We flogged the like of JP, and Kylie for most of the season and only used 3 subs in a few games as well as not resting players after the exiles games. In fact the only rest certain players got were forced through injury.

DHM and G have it spot on. The play-offs are great for the sport and should be celebrated not ridiculed. They seperate the good teams from the great teams, and the GF especially showcases everything thats great about our game.

See this confuses me, for years people have said there are only 4 top teams and that was killing the game, as they always finished top 4. We've now moved to a top 5 or 6, and that's viewed as a negative. Then a team winning from within that top 5 or 6 is also viewed as a negative.
It baffles me.

We're being told we're not worthy champions because we couldn't beat Wigan and Saints etc in the league rounds. Then we're told that we coasted the season and devalued the comp by only playing when it mattered. If we were coasting then who is to say we didn't coast against Wigan in the league. After all, in the two meaningful games, we did beat them.

So WIgan aren't really deserving of the dinner plate. Warrington are the worthy dinner plate recipients because we gifted Wigan 4 points by coasting against them in meaningless games.

Give the plate to Wire now!

It was all part of the plan. McDermott is an evil genius.

You see you only get a set allocation of good form, so Leeds played rubbish on purpose so they could use up their allocation of good form at the end of the season, when the trophies are handed out.

There is a clear logical inconsistency about suggesting that topping the table counts for everything whilst at the same time whining about Leeds (and presumably others such as Sts when the players were seemingly trying to get rid of Simmons) effectively not bothering in a number of games, and thereby skewing the whole table in the process.

I'd take G1's idea further. We should get an expert panel to review all games played during the regular season and amend results to reflect what would have happened had every team played their guts out in every game.

Or, we could just forget about actually playing games and simply have votes from rlfans decide results, scorers etc for each fixture based on votes. That way we also avoid player burnout, and our lads will be fresh to take on the Aussies in their only actual games.

Totally agree. People used to complain that the GF was always 1st vs 2nd and that was a sign that our league lacked depth (eg compared to the NRL).

Now they complain that the playoffs must be unfair for 5th to win

What's the common factors in both situations...

...Leeds' being champions and Wigan fans leading the complaints

I think there's an important distinction between not peaking at some points in the season and not trying.

I think anybody who really thinks this Leeds squad turns up for games and doesn't try and/or doesn't care about winning them has been watching a different team to me for the last decade or so.

I may be wrong, but I suspect the difference will be found on the training pitch. It is hard to keep a group of athletes at the absolute peak of their physical and mental sharpness for a full season. Particularly when most of them have played in almost every round of every competition for 3 years and most have played some internationals. That being the case it's not unreasonable to suppose that you might have a training schedule designed to build towards a peak, or peaks, near where the trophies are handed out.

I also suspect that players and coaches will have been a little surprised and taken aback by just how far off the pace they became at some parts of the last two seasons. That was probably a slight misjudgement and while I'm sure nobody on the inside panics too much during the weekly rounds, I'm sure they were disappointed and will want to get a bit nearer the mark in those games next year.

This is subtly but crucially different from "coasting" or not trying.

To pick up on the person above who said they didn't see how Leeds had used their resources wisely, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. Given that the aim towards which those resources were being managed was to win silverware and get to finals, I'd say it's difficult to argue that the management of resources was far off.

Agree that the team cannot peak throughout the season and that they got the timong right.

One area of concern I have though is the difficulty we have in scoring tries in the opposition 20 without the need to kick. Evenin the playoffs I think we have struggled with plays and dummy runners in the oppositions 20.

To me this is one area that does not seem to have been addressed at all. Maybe that is deliberate ie not showing plays during the season. Maybe it causes less defence and keeps the team fresher for the end of the season. i don't know but there will be times when the team needs to be able to execute those plays.

Exactly.
There are only 3 finals as it were in the season, the WCC, the Challenge Cup & the Grand Final.
We were in all 3 & won 2, so very nearly a perfect season.
I'm not aware that the qualification for any of these changed during the course of the season therefore all participants knew what they had to do at the start of the season.

PS the most embarrassing thing about this thread is the mis-spelling of "embarrassing" in the title.

We did manage it twice in the GF though. The BJB try featured 2 dummy runners, plus one missed out by the final pass.

The Ablett try was done through angles and timing, with a good blindside play from dummy half.

I do think we look more threatening near the line with McGuire in the team than without, but Webb was probably our most effective playmaker in those positions for a number of years, and I think we need to replace that.

Ok so saying that the team were coasting or not trying may be harsh but there were definitely times in the season where the difference in form from one week to the next was immense.

The only explanation I can logically conclude was that our playing style, game plans and overall tactics were tampered with sufficiently to cause vast divide between performances.

This was obviously not a bad thing if the ultimate goal is to lift silverware but if you want to see consistent week on week performances then another approach needs to be adopted.

So I guess it’s a trade-off – consistent performances or silverware? TBH I know which one I’d choose and that includes a trip to OT every October.

He was. Passing forward works as a great stumbling block for defensive lines etc. More people should try it.