the early season form teams can be pretty much guaranteed to be in the top 8 by Easter - kind of defeats the principle of "every minute matters" to give those teams 4 months of pointless games to keep the likes of Widnes happy.

Widnes could always be a little bit less ?

What a complete idiot.

What would be the point of the first 23 rounds if we all started on 0 points?

If Widnes had won more games they'd be in contention instead of languishing well away from the top four.

The sides higher up have earned their advantage, so starting from scratch won't work.
I do think the points gained against the bottom 4 should be removed though. In theory the top sides will have done better in these games so it may serve to tighten the table up a bit.
Mad idea (not thought it through so probably seriously flawed)...why not allow the 1st place side to select their 4 home opponents? Then the 2nd place side, then 3rd...could that work?

Didn't Lee Radford suggest something similar last year? I'm guessing he'll have changed his mind.

Whatever the system, there will be always someone complaining. The franchise system had promise, but a lack of enforcement, and no reward for the championship winners. This current system could see the team that finishes 9th in the regular season relegated when the the 12th placed team stay up, not probable, but possible.

Not sure about Radford but my FC supporting mate was very vocal about resetting points last year, doesn't seem too keen on that idea now, not sure why.

This pretty much.

Even if the points were reset, Widnes would have little chance of finishing top 4 because they are simply not good enough when the top sides step up at the business end. They have done well to get super 8s and avoid the possible MPG, mission complete.

This is a problem that was pointed out when this was dumbass system was first suggested, middle SL sides are very very early in the season only playing to be in either a competition they cannot win or a competition they wont lose.

And its all very well saying Widnes have 'mission complete' but there is more than a quarter of the season left and we have 3 of the top 8 out of the running, two of the 8 looking massively out of their depth with an aggregate score of 120-24 against.

this is system that the clubs didnt want, was forced upon them, that the players massively didnt want, isnt attracting fans as crowds have fallen again (and will fall further due to leeds being in the middle 8s, this is a feature of the system, not a bug) it should go along with Nigel Wood.

The one thing that is a little strange here is that, we are happy to take away any advantage gained from the clubs finishing 9/10th and 1st & second in the Championship (by re-setting the points to zero before the start of the middle 8's and jeprodise (theoretically) a clubs top flight status but, are happy to set the top 4 clubs (almost) before the Super 8's start.

The simple question is, what do we actually want from the super 8's ?

Of course, none of this would matter if we just played an even number of rounds, with a balanced fixture list and declered the top club as Champions.

The proposed change would certainly liven up the Super 8's

Equally, in theory, we could have a club in the Championship finishing 4th and gaining promotion ahead of the club that finished top.
Leigh have proved (again) that they are the top club in the Championship and in most other sport's, you would say that they have earned the right to be promoted.

The current system is just a gimmick and has done little to improve anything. Indeed, it way well prove to be a white elephant.

IF the sport is so determined to have the drama of The MPG, why not just go for a winner takes all, one off game between the bottom club in SL and the top club in the Championship ?

Is this the same James Rule who was banned by UK Anti Doping for covering up drug use by players at Hull FC (Gleeson?), trying to tell others how the game should be run?