And that for me is the biggest problem facing promotion hopefuls such as Leigh and Bradford. Games against each other and Fax will always be tough. Games against Dews/Fev/Sheffield/London sometimes throw up tough games but other times end in a one sided affair.

It is not ideal preparation for the intensity of the Middle 8's when you can win most matches playing at 75% of your best. The SL teams in the 8's will have been playing SL quality teams in SL paced games every week all season. They will be ready for a battle and used to fighting for every point.

I think Leigh last season just mentally were not prepared for that sort of adversity. We had gone through the season having (almost) everything our own way and then when we got hit with 3 back to back defeats in the 8's (The Hull KR come back and the Wakey 1pt loss particularly hurt!) I think it just took the wind out of our sails and all the bumps and bruises and injuries that you can ignore when you are winning just caught up with us and we collapsed badly.

Unfortunately the only way to catch SL clubs is to strengthen your side but this could make the problem of coasting through the season even worse leaving us more under cooked and less mentally toughened when the Middle 8's come around!

Hopefully last season taught us some serious lessons and we go into the 8's with a different attitude and ready for a real tough battle week in week out.

Somebody said that about us one year and we crashed and burned

That's true. There were plenty of games last year were Bradford only turned up for 20 minutes of the game, but still came away with the win at the end of the day

As we saw last year, the regular season is largely irrelevant as long as you finish in the top 4. For what it is worth I expect Leigh to finish top given the current squads.

I would also expect Bradford to have made a few more signings before the middle 8's so our squad could look quite a lot different by then. I guess it's a strategy with some risk but it seems we intend to spend our cap money closer to the business end of the season. If we play to our potential then a top 2 finish should be achievable.

Fax have enough about them to beat any side, so I wouldn't write them off but I don't think they'll manage enough consistency to finish in the top 2.

The biggest problem is the wide ability differential between many clubs in early part of the season. With many of the games, and let's not beat about the bush with this, being more like, 'opposed training sessions', than matches, the biggest difficulty is keeping our teams fully concentrating until the eights start and then being able to step up to a 'proper' set of high intensity games. In the great scheme of things, though there is a small advantage in being top, second - even third or fourth in the pre-amble won't materially affect the challenge of either club. I think it's intriguing that Leigh have brought in a host of big names before the season starts and that Bradford are, 'keeping their powder dry', until later. It will be interesting to see how the different tactics work out on the field.

One way around that would be Leigh, Halifax, Sheffield and ourselves to leave our games against each other till last 2 months of season.

Yeah, cos the RFL will certainly go for that.

Too true.

The RFL profess to believe that, 'every second counts' [or somesuch] and are too much concerned about appearances and having good slogans than actually trying to improve matters.

In fairness to them, everyone already sees the Championship as the "pre-match" to the main event of the Middle 8s. If they changed it to the suggestion above, it would be like the crap singer before the pre-match before the main event. And as much people would turn up to watch those games as do for the crap singer too.

We've had a year to come to terms with the Championship and most of our new recruits have experience of it. We have a realistic chance of top 2 and that is almost essential to progress further. I don't see any need to finish first if that hinders our ability to arrive in the middle eights in the best condition .....I don't think it was seen as a big deal for us last year. I expect to be in the top 2 with Leigh.
As for those finishing 3rd and 4th I expect it to be close between Fax, Fev, Eagles, Dewsbury and London with Fax possibly shading it for 3rd.
I'm not sure how any of it will prepare us for the real business.

Agree with that. I think it proved last year that apart from a bit of kudos for finishing top, the middle eights made very little difference as to finishing 1st or 2nd.
Finishing 3rd would be a bit worse, but top isn't essential, top 2 is.

I'd really like to see us push for 1st. We probably got away with Leigh imploding in the eights last year. Going to their place will not be easy. Also i think us having to play Wakey away twice probably cost us. If we got them at odsal i think we would have just sneaked it with home advantage.

I'd really like to get Leigh and the bottom SL side at our place next year.

Should the middle eight fixture permutations be published with a guarantee that they remain as such I could see the benefits of finishing first.

That's obviously true, but the problem is that, that [iexact[/i scenario is the major part of what the club is selling tickets for. It is 'put upable' for the keener fans, but isn't very inviting for the fair weather supporters, who I'd guess are the ones now being targetted.

Top 2 should be the target so as to get the maximum number of home games. Finishing first means nothing if you cockup the 8's.
I think Bradford's tactics through the season were the right choices looking at the big picture.
My only complaint was that the last games were spread over two days giving one team an advantage. I don't believe that Fax would have had such an easy time of it had out game been played the same time as Wakefield's as that home advantage was still up for grabs