I thought it started this week?

Cheers mate and your comments are spot on.
For the first time in a few years Saints played the conditions brilliant last night but if I was a Wire fan I would be a bit worried about this cause the conditions at this time of year has been Saints achilles heel in the past.

Won fair and square but with a whole lot of luck.

If I were a wires fan, wouldn't be too despondent. Only lost by 4 trys to 3, despite practically begging saints to win. It wasn't Potters or Smiths superior/inferior tactics that won/lost this game it was the fact that Briers (espc) and Monaghan played poo. Thought Wellens was crucial and in Matty Smith, you had a good hungry player with something to prove. And that bl**dy Cunningham, I wouldn't like to be in front of him in a post office queue, how many times has he scored trys like that?

If i was a Wire fan i'd be more worried about how tired they looked last night. We've seen it happen with Saints, backing up in the playoffs after winning the cup is just so difficult these days.

You seriously think they looked tired????...

To be honest, I think they were just outplayed by a side who were more hungry for the win.....If they were really tired they wouldn't have restricted Saints to just 4 tries.

What you actually saw was a prime example of how important a dominant pack is in Rugby League...Think back to Wembley and how great a player Briers looked behind a rampant Wire pack and then look at Briers last night behind a pack going nowhere. Similarly, Matty Smith looked a half decent player and gained a lot of plaudits (slightly overdone on Sky, mind you), playing behind Graham & co.

You can build up individuals all you like, but having a good, strong pack is still, and always will be, the major recipe for Rugby League success.

And you can do down halfbacks but it wouldn't matter how dominant your pack was, if there was no-one to organise and trigger the attack, it would just be a lot of bluster.

The key to a good game of rugby league is to have the whole team playing in a cohesive way and for mine last night was the first time this season that I have seen Saints playing such a dominant role in a match and in such a controlled way. I put that down to Matty Smith. The pack allowed him to do his job, but he still did his job. And also, our back three of Wello, Gardner and Foster were fantastic at rescuing us from dodgy situations at various points. The only player for me who did not pull his weight was Meli.

So home advantage isn't significant in an elimination semi final?

Looking at your fans and players last night, it didn't seem to be an irrelevant fixture to the vast majority of them.

The whole system is just designed to give Sky more matches for their schedules.

I personally believe it would be better to go with an elimination contest straight from the off, preferably in an old-style Premiership method of 1 v 8, 2 v 7, etc, thus cutting out this ridiculous situation where we could easily see a repeat of this weekend's fixtures in a fortnight's time.

Only problem is that the advantage of how high a team finishes in the regular season would be even less than it is now. I think you have to reward a team better than a sort of cup plays with some slight seeding. At the moment finishing in the top 4 is a major advantage and so it should be.

...The system I mentioned does reward the higher placed side by giving them home advantage??...It also eliminates the possibility of sides meeting more than once and also makes all games knock out matches.