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.

I couldnt agree more.

Scrap the Magic Weekend and the playoff series then, will give a longer off-season for elite players.

As long as you have an unbalanced fixture list however, first past the post is not an acceptable way of deciding the champions IMO.