I really can't see Salford being anywhere near the bottom four. Their starting team is a match for any in the competition.

But that only means we finish 4th in mini league and they finish 5th. We'd still need to beat them again in playoff match.

Yeah, one way or the other we'd need to win two middle 8 games against SL opposition and, of course, beat all the other championship clubs too.

7 weeks of 4 matches with 2 points available = max of 56 points up for grabs. 5 wins gets 10 points. That should be good enough for third and automatic. four wins should be good enough for the £1m game, possibly even less if the top two sides total 26 points, thats nearly half the points gone already.

The numbers are easy, the points - given that its like 7 cup games - rather more difficult!

Sounds easy....but as you say, 7 cup games!!

That's the main reason why I hope we rotate the squad during the qualifying stage. We don't just need to keep the 'first choice' 17 fresh for the 'business end', but we also need the rest of the squad to be fully match fit and ready to rock 'n' roll in the case of injuries. With the probable exception of the halves we can do that as things stand and assuming the pre-season games confirm that the newcomers are as good as their youtube videos...