11 of 14 Grand Finals have been contested between 1st and 2nd place, if people think final league position isn't important then they're dumb. It was eventually going to happen that a team as low as 5th would win it, that's just how sport goes. But it took 14 years and a few variables
- Leeds disruptive off season and injury plagued start, giving them a false league position.
- Wigan running out of steam after the Cup Final.
- Warrington suffering from not being involved in enough close tight games during the regular season.

It will probably be another 14 years before another team wins from 5th-8th place, maybe longer. Just look at the performances of Catalans, Hull FC, and KR last year's 6th-8th teams in the playoffs, all dumped out quite convincingly.

There have been 14 Grand Finals, so either that's a typo or you've forgotten about 1998-2001! 28 GFists.
Also, 4 have been from outside the top 2. Wigan (2003), Bulls (2005 & champs), Saints (2011) all third and Leeds (2011 & champs) fifth.

4 out of 28. Does it matter where you finish in the league? 24 out of 28 in the top two says yes!

Here's the thing though, it's either that the playoffs are a formality and 1v2 will be the norm GF, or the weekly rounds have less meaning because it's all about the POs and GF. It can't be both as the RFL and Sky seem to want.

If 6th, 7th or 8th won a GF it would make a mockery of the league in my opinion (and arguably Leeds already did that to some degree going by the number of comments we've seen regarding how much (or rather little) the rounds mean). At the very least it would render the term "Champions" ridiculous (again, Leeds have arguably done this to some degree by being 5th place champions) and would create a schism between what are supposedly two parts of one competition. It would be a travesty if that result came up, so why have a structure which allows it as a possibility. If the response to that is "Ah but it will never happen" then why have that structure in the first place?

Why if the teams in 1st-8th all finished on the same points

I think the play-offs being this size only work if the league is competitive. At the moment, some pretty mediocre teams are getting into play-off places.

Well the point of making it a 8 team playoff i believe was to give teams around that 7th-11th place something to fight for come the season end otherwise the last 6-7 games for those teams seemed pretty meaningless.
When it was a 5 team playoff people complained about seeing the same teams every year there (Saints, Leeds, Wigan, Bradford) and wanted some of the other teams to be able to taste playoff competition to help them other teams grow and close the gap to what was at the time 'The Big 4'.
It's like most things in RL, people moaned about the Eng/France mid season game and asked for a better challenge along the lines of an Exiles game......it was introduced and then people just complained about that too.
At the end of the day.....Some RL fans are just never satisfied.

That playoff system, as a concept is absolutly fine.

Sure you can back and forth about should it be top 5? should it be top 6? or whatever, but the concept itself is brilliant.

How many other showpiece events compare to the grand final in domestic sport in this country?

Maybe the FA cup. But that's it.

Ah ok, I see what you mean there.

Apologies it was typo, and completely forgot about Saints last year.

Its the top 8 that is ruining it. In the top 5/6 format only twice did teams outside the top 2 make the GF. We've only had a top 8 for 3 years and alreadys its been done twice.

I think finishing in the top 2 is less likely to produce the Grand Finalists than ever as their is hardly anything between the top 6.

The commentary on Sky is shocking in demeaning the weekly rounds. I can't remember who, may have been Paul Cullen, said that week that it wasn't surprising that Liam Hood came on for the last 15 minutes in such a big game when he has little experinace because Hood getting 15 minutes was more important than winning the game!!!!!!!!!

.The playoffs are no doubt reducing the weekly intensity of the competition. Why, for example, would Wire players go through the pain barrier to win weekly round games when no matter how many they win, they still won't be delivered a Championship. After what happened to them last year I don't blame them. If you finish top you should get 2 cracks at making the GF, not 1. Look at Leeds in 2004, when they finished top for first time in years, they got a 2nd bite, after losing to Bradford, and ended up winning it.

It could also be noted that in the last 3 years there are different teams pushing for the top game now as well, in all seriousness there are 4, 5 teams that could rightly claim to be title contenders

To me, its that close between Hudds, Leeds, Wire, Wigan, Saints, Catalan, and maybe Hull, that if you do manage to finish top, above all the other great teams over an 8 month period of fixtures you deserve to be Champions more than ever.

We all know, in a knockout 80 min game they can all beat each other on their day, its who can manage to be top at the end of the full season that is more impressive.