1st had it really easy though didn't they - 4th then 5th at home. For a champion team that's a piece of surely.

Should be, but they obviously weren't capable of peaking at the right time.

Did they misunderstand the concept of the competition?

Surely a league placings deciding the champions is as flawed if not more flawed than playoffs.

Lets say Leeds and Wigan are fighting it out for top spot, Leeds play a full strength Huddersfield one week, then Wigan play them the week after, difference is Huddersfield are in the challenge cup final the next week and as they have no chance if becoming SL champions they play a weekend side resting players for wembley.

Now how is that 'fair'.

WOW

Its called the Challenge CUP
Cup competition = Knockout
Winner stays in, loser goes home.

There is an issue if teams finishing the regular season in a lower position consistantly win the GF but, for now, we should just congratulate Leeds.
They beat Wakefield (h), Catalan (a), Wigan (a) and then beat Warrington in the final.
They certainly deserved to lift the trophy, whether we should decide the champions by having an end of season play off is a different matter.

I can't be bothered to go through all 24 pages, but surely there's no point in having a playoff to decide the champions and then complaining when a team placed 5th win it?
I don't like the current playoff schedule, but Leeds beat 3 of the 4 teams that placed above them in the league (away from home). The only team higher up that they didn't beat were Saints and, let's face it, they've never worried about knocking them out before.
In the majority of years, the GF winners have been from one of the top couple of places, we've had two years (out of what, 13?) where a team has won it from 5th, but this happens to be a group of players that, even before their 2011 victory, had achieved a pretty special record. As long as they've got Sinfield leading them and can manage to get Peacock taped back together for the final, they'll continue to impress on the big day.
Don't deny the achievement, or indeed the romance of what they've done over the last 6 years. To do so would make you look like a bitter, whinging, sore losing misery guts.
Its other teams jobs to take the trophy from them. Saints, Wire and Wigan have all beaten Leeds plenty of times in the weekly rounds, but fall short on the big day. You can't tell me that Leeds "just aren't trying" during the weekly rounds.

Very true.
Would it be fair to say Leeds struggle to get themselves up for the "less important" weekly rounds though? The pressure of a do or die situation seems to improve their performances 10 fold.

The reality is it means nothing for the weekly rounds. We've had 15 years of the grand final and on only 3 occasions has someone outside the top 2 won the competition.

Teams will still try to finish as high as they can because if you finisng in the top 2 you have - 2 home games to get to the grand final with a week off. If you finish lower it is more tricky.

Finishing in the top 2 will be still be the main priority for title challengers and that will give them the best chance of winning the competition.

Leeds have an exceptional record in the grand final, it's the same spine that won 3 grand finals on the trot, an unprecedented achievment and they've managed to overcome the handicap of a lower position to win the trophy again. They are worthy of the tag champions.

Top 8 is too much, but we have what we have and that's the way it's going to. It's nowhere near as detrimental as people are making out.

Amazing how the people can be negative about the 5th placed team winning the competition while at the same time people can be negative about the competition being too predictable (in fact, if I could be bothered to search I am sure I would find people who have expressed both opinions)

For those employed:

If you were paid based on your performance in just one month of the year, would you struggle to work your hardest for the other 11 months?

Well said. More people should read that. You might as well say the team that wins the FA Cup in football should be the Champions. Thats a better comparison to the structure of the NFL and the NRL than the SL is!

I imagine they will, and whilst not suggesting teams would aim for 5th I do think Leeds twice winning it from 5th has exposed an anomaly within the playoff system, vis, that whilst the top 2 teams are potentially only 2 games from the final, 5th place can get there in 3 games including a Week 1 home fixture against 8th. When you add to this the fact that their Week 2 opponents will have come back from an away fixture against 1st (unless they beat them) it suggests, to me, that coming 5th isn't as disadvantageous as it should be in order to encourage a real race for the top.

The league element accounts for 90% of the competition, after all, so I think league position should affect your playoff structure in a way that it currently fails to; none of this 5v8 or 2v3 nonsense.