Quote: SmokeyTA "If it isnt hard enough, its too easy. Surely this isnt new information for you? If you are arguing it wasnt hard enough, you are arguing it was too easy. You are arguing it wasnt hard enough, you say so above, So you are arguing it was too easy. Exceot it wasnt, it was harder than anyone else has managed.
Your point is clear, you have made it plenty of times, 5th werent punished enough for finishing 5th. To use your word it wasnt 'hellish' enough. 1st isnt rewarded enough for finishing 1st, 2 home ties guaranteed, a possible week off, the possible club call, and playing teams below them in the table isnt enough of an advantage.
Your evidence of this is Leeds are SL champions again after finishing 5th, and the teams finishing 1st and 2nd arent, because they didnt receive enough of an advantage and Leeds werent disadvantaged enough, this removes credibility from the qualifying competition as why would you bother finishing 1st if finishing 5th wasnt properly punished/rewarded.
Now stay with me here, Your argument, and your use of supporting evidence is predicated on the premise that were the play-offs in a different format, Leeds wouldnt have won them. If we discount that premise then Leeds victory is evidence of nothing. Now you can say you accept that Leeds could have won the play-offs under any format, but if you did, you would need to accept that means Leeds winning in the play-offs isnt evidence that the play-offs arent hard enough on the club playing 5th. That had your idea been the one used, Leeds could still have ended up champions, in fact, in a 1st v 8th knock out which you propose here Leeds, as the 5th placed team, would have played 4th, Les Catalans, then as the lowest ranked team, the top ranked team, Wigan, and then the next ranked team in the final, Warrington. All in knock out games. Which is what happened and Leeds won them all, and a game against Wakefield. Why you are complaining the system isnt hard enough for a team to win from 5th and then proposing a much easier one?
To move on to what you say you want, a sliding scale of difficulty depending on where you finish. Well we have that. 1st and 2nd get home games and 2nd chance if necessary, 3rd and 4th get a 2nd chance. 5th and 6th get no second chance, need to win 4 and not 3 games, will only play one home game, 7th and 8th get one shot, every game away from home. Which makes it more difficult for the lower ranked team than the system you want.'"
The phrase "BOOOOOOM" springs to mind.
Please post that on every thread where some idiot is moaning about the play-offs.
It all smacks to me of anti-Leeds bias. Just because a team wins it from 5th doesnt mean the system is flawed or else why bother with that many teams in the play-offs in the first place?
In theory any team qualifying can win the final but the route they have to follow gets progressively harder the further down the table they finish. What's wrong with that?
I guarantee if anyone else had won it from 5th there wouldn't be this outcry.
Once again you show you have no idea about how elite athletes are conditioned or the nature of sporting form and confidence. Given that Hetherington said the Leeds team would have been dismantled and many players released had they not at least got to the Grand Final during the poor mid-season run it is implausible to claim that they were not "working their hardest". Unfortunately they were not, at that time, able to win as many games as they wanted.
