As Leeds season ticket holder I am frustrated at the form the team show during the regular season. It is not through lack of effort, Leeds don't have a very deep squad and injuries have a significant impact whereby injured players have to play when they sometimes shouldn't.

If I went to the games purely for the quality I would be even more disappointed, but I don't - rugby is a form of entertainment I meet my kids and we have a social evening together with the Rhinos as a backdrop. They give us a mutual interest and we all know it is not a matter of life and death it is a game.

Perhaps we need to market the game differently to get fans going to games for other reasons than seeing their team win, God forbid it ever got like football where hundreds of thousands of single men go into a decline every Saturday their team loses as they sacrificed everything in their life for an opportunity to watch a round ball being kicked around by a few highly paid parasites 40 times a year.

All teams know the rules at the start of the season, the fact the likes of Wigan left their best form back in June should not in any way detract from Leeds' achievement. Wane was out coached a lesson he will have all winter to ponder on as will Tony Smith who I'm sure thought all they had to do was turn up.

This is an outstanding side - to win 5 finals in 6 in a salary cap sport - you know Leeds adhere to the numbers unlike some of their opponents - is a staggering achievement. No matter what you think about the play off system you have to admire the nerve and the skill to be able to turn up that many times and win when it really matters - shame so many on here cannot recognise that.

What hellish run was that? By finishing 5th Leeds got to play the team who finished 8th, Wakefield, at home. Catalans, on the other hand, finished one place higher than Leeds in 4th, for which they were rewarded with an away fixture against the league leaders! In week 2 these teams meet each other but one has had a significantly more difficult fixture, away from home, than the other and has traveled from the south of France, to Wigan, then back again. People who can't see anything wrong with that sort of playoff system are deluding themselves imo.

I'm not saying that Leeds' path to the final was easy, but it certainly wasn't hellish and it wasn't the path that finishing 5th should force you to take, imo.

Can't argue with that. The system is what it is and Leeds have been the best at winning within that system.

First up, we can take nothing away from Leeds, who won the competetition according to the rules it was set up by.

Whether the competetion is set up correctly is another matter, and I'm pretty sure it's not, for the following reason:

RLs biggest challenge is, as it always has been in my living memory, media attention. From which follows sponsors, more fans, growth. The fact that we face clear bias isn't an excuse, as some suggest, to forget about it and accept defeat, rather it just increases the scale of the challenge in getting RL somewhere near the profile it deserves.

Here's the thing - its very hard to get attention without a steady stream of important games to keep interest up. If we only have one or two important games per year, no big media outlet will retain an RL reporter and even on the one day a year when League gets in the mainstream news, the fact that there's been no stories for a year means that people outside the game don't even know who the players are. It's like if I suddenly read a big piece about UK basketball's grand final ( presumably there is one ).

The most pressing thing RL's marketing needs to look at, is how to keep steady attention throughout a season. In this respect, a "Champions League", between the top fours of the NRL and SL, with group stages ( playing your two overseas away games in one trip, but otherwise fixtures spread out over months as in soccer) would be excellent.

Sadly, I think that's dreamland stuff. However in the mean time, the last thing we can afford is for the regular season to be reduced in importance. It's media suicide. Leeds have now twice in a row exposed the problem. Maybe its just end of season blues, but being honest I can't say I'm that enthusiastic about the new season...you see your team start to build what looks like an excellent playing unit, but those League points you get from a win don't matter all that much.

No offence but Champions should be the consistent team through the season and who are top.Imagine Liverpool winning champions tag from 5th?

hudds away last game of season lol...

Think you might want to re-read the post. He's talking about Leeds' mid-season slump which then meant that in the run in they could barely afford to lose a game in order to ensure a play-off spot.

Leeds peaked 3 times in the season - a true achievement...now if only we could win that bloody Challenge Cup Final

Ideally RL would not need play offs, they tend to be used by sports that dont have an ' even ' regular season of games , but like most things in our sport whatever we do has a negative effect on something else

A play off system devalues the regular season, no play off means the season could be over for most clubs after a few weeks, licencing financially secures clubs at the lower end of SL, but also removes meaning to their games

There is no simple answer, and I doubt things are going to change any time soon, the sport is between a rock and a hard place with nowhere to go

The system is contrived to finish the season on a high note.
However the weekly rounds are the best attended games compared to the abysmal gates in the challenge cup and play-offs.
Winning the league (finishing top) should have, at least, equal status to winning the GF otherwise league games will become increasingly meaningless and the game will wither as a result.

Leeds dont go into any game wanting to lose, but they play at about 75% throughout the regular season to avoid burnout. Then when September comes around they turn it up a notch. It's called knowing the rules and playing to the system. What is the point of having a playoff system and then moaning afterwards when the "top" team doesnt win. Oh, and if say the playoffs did get changed to say top 4, I am almost certain Leeds would be pushing top 2 every year because as shown, when the big games come around at the end of the season, they are as good as everyone.

We need Leeds to play half a team in the 27 game regular season and finish 8th. They can bring in there big gun players for the play offs and win the Grand Final from 8th. This would show up the weakness of the play off process.

From 2000 to 2005 there were quite a high percentage of intensive games at all levels in Superleague. Over the last 3 years intensive games have been replaced by momentum games, so there is a margin of acceptable loss with a top 8 play off.

Also, I don,t think the RFL have control of the play offs and challenge cup. Sky own the Play Offs and the BBC own the Challenge Cup schedules.

I imagine that most people accept the playoffs as necessary and also find them (or at the very least the GF) an entertaining and spectacular way of ending the season. However, I also imagine most people would be happier if the playoffs had a clear sliding-scale of difficulty based on your team's finishing position. If nothing else, teams in the bottom half of the top 8--if we must stick with a top 8--shouldn't be playing home fixtures against teams lower down the table than them, whilst teams that finish higher than them play tougher opposition away.

On the subject of the playoffs being a necessary spectacle with which to end the season, in that respect we must simplify this convoluted and contrived format which can see repeat fixtures and losing teams advancing to the next stage and instead make every round a knockout round.

Don't remember Catalans busting a gut in the game at Wigan. Leeds on the other hand had a tough game against Wakefield who were the form team at the time. Leeds then also had to travel to the South of France and back before facing Wigan. Not saying the system is perfect but lets not try and belittle Leeds' achievement.

Typical of RLFANS (I say that as people on here are the minority), what a great spectacle last night showcasing our sport at it's best, the toughest athletes playing the tougest game, no other sport can match even poorer performances yet people continue to do the game down.