Absolutely bang on

Play-offs should be top four with the top team going straight to the final, third and fourth play-off to meet the second team in the SF, third team has initial home advantage.

Bottom side in SL plays off against top side in Championship for promotion\relegation.

Simple.

The team finishing top would have three weeks between games, they'd be undercooked.

Not simple.

Top 5 is the ideal system, there is the issue of dead rubber games outside of that though.

I would like a return of [ifirst past the post[/i - imagine all the title chases of the past 16 seasons we could have had. Why on earth anyone would want to sacrifice an entire seasons worth of fixtures for 4 weeks of utter contrivance is beyond me.

If we're basing our competition of making mediocre teams feel "involved", then god help us.

So we should change the system based on the first exciting last day to a PL season in years?

Personally I would change the format of the play-offs and reduce the amount of teams to 5 or 6 but to scrap them all together? Nah. Personally I'd rather see a play-off system brought into the Premire League.

I think we need to keep the play-offs, but would agree that top 8 is a nonsense. This should be reduced to an absolute maximum of 5, in my opinion.

The champions should be the league winners, yet the powers that be refer to Leeds as 'champions'. I can't wait for a GF with the 7th & 8th team contesting it.

Yet again why 'should' they be? It's been said about 1000 times but everyone knows what is considered the most prestigious to win before the season starts, it's not like they suddenly announced the play off system after the league was finished.

Because for many people there needs to be a firm, definitive link between success in the season and being crowned champions. While I wouldn't go so far as removing the playoffs altogether I would agree with many others that they need to be reduced so that the title of champions is not dissonant with the actual success they have had.

Personally I like the playoffs (as a concept, at least) because they require a team to be successful in [iboth [/ia league and an end of season knock-out, rather than just one or the other. Unfortunately the current incarnation of the playoffs means that a team actually [idoesn't[/i have to successful at both; they can in fact experience more failure than success in the league element but be crowned champions because they succeed in the knock-out element. To me that's not what the term "champion" represents.

I'm sorry, but anyone arguing that we should bring back the first-past-the-post system based on this season's PL finish is deluded!

Not every season finishes with quite the same bang? Really? I'll tell you now, it'll probably never ever happen like that ever again. It was a one off. It would be like a team winning the GF in the way Catalan beat Saints earlier this year.

How many PL titles have been won before the last game of the year? A lot.
Fortunately for them, there are the Champions League places to play for as well as the Europa League, then there's also the relegation battle. There is something happening all over the league.

You can't replicate that in RL. We don't have a European competition. We don't have relegation. If we have first-past-the-post system, the majority of the league won't be playing for anything. And the majority of seasons will end on a damp squib.

It's a tricky balance to get right this one..

If you brought back relegation based on performance then teams would go back to packing their squads with cheap and average Aussies...the youth that is being given a chance now would remain in the U20's or go and play in the lower leagues and be lost.

If you cut the top 8 down to say top 4 (like they have in RU) then although the play off matches would be harder to call and crowds would increase....you'd have 10 teams with nothing to do. It's not like we have a strong European competition that places 5 - 8 can aim to qualify for.. teams would have nothing to play for in the last 3/4 rounds if they don't sit on the edge of the 4th position.

Personally think that it should be the Top 5 or 7 and scrap the coaches call rubbish.

The League Leaders Shield should also have far more importance...as mentioned by others, the team that have played the best all year WILL finish top...so they should in my opinion go straight to the GF...with the remaining 4 or 6 teams (depending on whether its a Top 5 or Top 7 system) involved in a play off system to reach the final. That way far more importance can be placed on the effort of finishing in 1st position.

I'd also like to see the WCC extended....but slowly. No rushing into a huge 8 team competition just yet. I'd have the two finalists from each competition play on a single day...runners up in each final play each other at say 3pm and then 6pm is the main event with the two champions.

1 For every year the association football title is decided on the last day, there are 19 years when it's decided weeks beforehand.

2) So yes, Sunday's football was exciting - but it's the excitement that comes once every blue moon, most of the time, the final rounds see teams with "nothing to play for" to use the preferred phrase of this board.

3) Play-offs aren'tan NRL tradition - they're a rugby league tradition. It's how the champions have nearly always been decided: from1 1895 to 1973 and from 1998 to present. The 25 years that the title was awarded to the team who finished top of the table after the 'regular season' were the aberration and the break with traditions - and the clubs only agreed to it if the RFL agreed to a post season 'premiership' to make up for the lost play-off games.

4) I'm sorry Warrington couldn't take their 'minor premier' form into the play-offs last year, but that's the rules of the competition you entered. Frankly you're still building from the days when you were just crap - take the achievement you managed last year. Personally, as a Cas fan, I'd be happy with topping the league, even if we didn't win the title. It's a step in the right direction.

I'd like to see less teams in the playoffs, I think it really devalues the competition when more than half of the league is in it. It should be the top 6 at the very very most.

I'd also like to see more recognition for the league leaders because it's much more of an achievement that winning a few games in a knockout competition.

How? They get a trophy, despite not being champions, atm - how would give them more recognition?


... actually, just read Hear Ye's post above



That's an interesting idea (subject to whether it's an advantage or disadvantage to wait 2, 3 or 4 weeks between you last league game and the title game)

That's one way, but like you say the wait can often be a disadvantage as well as an advantage.
If we had an extended WCC, then we can at least reward them with a place in that. But other than a greater advantage in the play-offs or more money, there's not much they can get at the moment. (Although I think the trophy could be better than a tiny hub-cap!)

Just to reiterate this point, look at the FA Community Shield (a minor trophy), the NRL Minor Premiership (an equivalent trophy) and the SL LLS for comparison:

It's a tough one because I think a lot of it comes down to people's perception of it, but maybe that can be changed. Everything about it at the moment seems to be very watered down in terms of the sheild, the celebrations and the reporting of the winners.

For a start, the sheild looks absolutely pants when compared to the Challenge Cup and Grand Final silverware. I think it should be a trophy rather than a shield and should look much better than it currently does.

When Warrington won it, there wasn't all that much fuss made about it despite being the hardest to achieve. When we showed it off at the next home game, the celebrations weren't even close to anything like when we won the Challenge Cup. I felt like more of a show should have been put on.

I'd like to see it highlighted more by RL media too. For example on the Super League website, it has a list of the past Grand Final winners. I'm not sure there's anything that lists who the winners of the LLS were. It should be highlighted and have it's own section.

Out of interest, here are the points margins by the winners of the first past the post system in RL thus far. It's important to contextualise the Wigan wins at the end of the list, and compensate the part-time playing deficiency all the other teams had, that is now, sort of, levelled out by the salary cap.

1973-74 Salford by 1pt
1974-75 St Helens by 11pts
1975-76 Salford by 1pt
1976–77 Featherstone Rovers by 5pts
1977–78 Widnes by 6pts
1978–79 HKR by 2pts
1979–80 Bradford Northern by 1pt
1980–81 Bradord Northern by 2pts
1981–82 Leigh by 2pts
1982–83 Hull FC by 4pts
1983–84 HKR by 1pt
1984–85 HKR by 3pts
1985–86 Halifax by 1pt
1986–87 Wigan by 15pts
1987-88 Widnes by 4pts
1988-89 Widnes by 3pts
1989–90 Wigan by 4pts
1990–91 Wigan by 2pts
1991–92 Wigan by 12pts
1992–93 Wigan by 0pts (points difference with St Helens)
1993-94 Wigan by 0pts (points difference with Bradford Northern and Warrington)
1994-95 Wigan by 7pts
1995-96 Wigan by 8pts
1996 St Helens by 1pt
1997 Bradford by 7pts

And here's the same for the Premier League for comparison:

92/93 - Man Utd by 10pts
93/94 - Man Utd by 8pts
94/95 - Blackburn by 1pt
95/96 - Man Utd by 4pts
96/97 - Man Utd by 7pts
97/98 - Arsenal by by 1pt
98/99 - Man Utd by 1pt
99/00 - Man Utd by 18pts
00/01 - Man Utd by 10pts
01/02 - Arsenal by 7pts
02/03 - Man Utd by 5pts
03/04 - Arsenal by 11pts
04/05 - Chelsea by 12pts
05/06 - Chelsea by 8pts
06/07 - Man Utd by 6pts
07/08 - Man Utd by 2pts
08/09 - Man Utd by 4pts
09/10 - Chelsea by 1pt
10/11 - Man Utd by 9pts
11/12 - Man City by 0pts

6 out of 20 seasons have gone to the last day.

Also worth pointing out that the last 13 Super Leagues have all gone down to the very last game with both teams facing each other in that last clash. A couple of them have gone down to the final five or ten minutes as well before the game was decided, not to mention those playoff clashes which were similarly determined in closing minutes e.g. Wide to West, Carney vs Leeds.

I really don't see why we can't manage that potential disadvantage, tbh. In fact, let's ask ourselves why there needs to be up to a 4 week gap between the last round of SL and the GF.

Here's a proposition:

1st Place = Bye to Final
2nd Place = Bye to SF
3rd & 4th = QF

This year it would look something like this:

Sun 9th Sep: last game of SL
Wed 12th Sep: QF
Sat 15th Sep: SF
Sat 22nd Sep: GF

This would make becoming champions increasingly harder the lower down the table you finish, with 3rd and 4th place having to play a hugely intensive run of games to reach the GF. It would also make the playoffs more intense and exciting, knockouts at every stage, with the last 4 games of the season occurring over the space of a fortnight (last w/e of SL and GF being bookends of the fortnight), a packed festival of RL if marketed correctly, as opposed to the long, drawn out, convoluted and unintensive playoff series we have now.

Of course this may be fodder for the tin-hat pile of RL theories.

But then the 1st placed team isn't going to play for 3 weeks after their final game. The team they play will be battle-hardened. It's not always a benefit to have time off.

Just an idea.

The league leaders are crowned SL champions and the top 4 go into the end of season playoffs with the NRL top 4 for the world club challenge.

You get the extended world club challenge everybody wants, more meaningful league fixtures but keeping a playoff system and possible last day excitment.

Main stumbling block would obviously be the Aussies agreeing to it, which they wouldn't as they'd lose their show-piece event once every other year (a Grand Final).

After that, it'd be the logistics of such large travelling distances over a short period of time. Would they have to travel from one side of the world to the other every week? Or would they sacrifice home advantage?

It's an idea, and one that I've mullered over in the past. But it's not in our power to decide, which means therefore nothing will come of it!

Read my post again; the team who finishes first will have 1 week off.