I have still never seen a convincing argument for a playoff structure, other than the financial success it brings.

In terms of being a show piece and promoting the sport then we would have been far better on FPTP last year as Ryan Hall scoring with literally the last play of the game to win the championship at Huddersfield would have been our own Aguero moment. Having the top teams gunning for the top place all season, rather than knowing the odd thrown game whilst resting players will not matter, would be much more entertaining, and make 95% of the calendar (Every normal game) more interesting. All you lose is 3 matches at the end of the season.

We have the playoffs so we can have a night at Old Trafford where we bring in a load of money. There is no reason to have it, if every team plays every other team the same amount of times (make magic a weekend in the cup) then the Champions are the team that finishes first, not someone who wins a few games at the end of the season.

Make the Old Trafford game Champions vs Cup winners for a big cash prize or a new trophy. No need to come up with some convoluted system to try and reinvent the wheel!

I've always said make the team that finishes first champions, then turn the top 8's into a different cup competition, like in football with the fa and league cup.

One thing is plainly obvious by reading the last few pages, there's no clear fix. There isn't a structure or format that anyone has put forward that is perfect, every structure will have it's issues.

It looks like we're trying to satisfy all of the following criteria at once:
- A pathway to Superleague from the Championship/C1
- No dead rubbers (nigh on impossible in any league)
- Not rewarding mediocrity with playoff spots
- Equal and fair fixtures
etc etc etc

Licencing wasn't perfect. It rendered the championship almost pointless, it rewarded sides in 7th & 8th a playoff spot, sides mathematically incapable of making the top8 are faced with a load of dead rubbers etc. (There were some positive points too of course).

Personally, I think as a sport we need to get out of the mind set that every club should always be playing for something, the 'every minute counts' mantra. We have to accept that there will be dead rubbers whatever the league structure.

All of the clubs knew the league format before the season started - if they didn't want to be involved in dead rubbers, then make sure your positioned where you need to be so that you're not. Be better.

Dead rubbers are part and parcel of pretty much every league structure;
NRL: 16 Clubs, Top8 Playoff, no relegation, 24 games/2 byes
RU Premiership: 14 Clubs, top4 Playoff, bottom placed relegated, top6 qualify for Europe.
EPL: 20 clubs, no playoffs, top4/5 qualify for Europe, bottom 3 relegated.

In the NRL, there are 4 clubs already into dead rubber territory. EPL have loads of crap pointless games shoehorned at the end of MOTD. The RU Prem is probably the best format of the three (in terms of meeting the criteria at the top), but they have the incentive of European qualification.

Deciding the Champions via a Playoff Structure/Grand Final is Rugby League's traditional method, going right back to 1895. It was only for the period 1973-97 where it was declared by who finished top.

A 3rd trophy needs to be introduced, a new competition, the game is crying out for it.

If you then get knocked out of the Challenge Cup and a new knockout trophy early and end up in the Super 8s not able to break into the top 4..there's less to grumble about.

yeah i am not feeling this team who finishes top should be super league champions with the exclusion of play-offs. The team who finishes top are the super league minor champions. nothing wrong with that!

we just cant seem to get this play off format right. the competition only has 6 teams at a max who can make the play-offs competitive.

I got not problem with top 5/6 going into play off rounds and we build from that. If we can get to a position where we have 8 strong enough teams then we extend it. yeah it means towards end of the season we will see dead rubbers but that is sport. You will never stop dead rubbers and every other sport has it so dunno why in super league we all seem to get so worked up about it.

There are three trophies already.

Where would we find the time to add a new knockout comp to the calendar?

Exactly - it's a fantasy to imagine that there's a league structure that can make every game matter right to the end of the season, that won't massively disadvantage those teams who have been consistently good for the whole year; other, much higher profile sports, seem to cope perfectly well with the idea that as a season draws to a close, the front runners have silverware to play for, while the stragglers are left to draw their own achievements from the season as a whole.

Maybe it's got something to do with the attitude of the club and its supporters? For example, I haven't heard the Wakefield chairman, or fans, calling for a change to the competition rules now we've managed to scrape in to the 8; all the opinion I've seen is that being safe for 2017 by July was a good achievement, and the Super 8's are probably a chance to introduce some young players and recruit from a stronger position. "Every minute matters" was probably an error in marketing terms - it doesn't, it never will and you're tilting at windmills trying to make it so.

We do know its not working, we know why its not working, what are we going to learn about the system in the next 8 years that we dont already know?

What we are seeing now is the new response to things in RL, Something is hard, so lets just pretend its impossible and give up.

See also, Player production, the WCC, increasing crowds, building new facilities.

Literally, the main argument in favour of this system now is to not change purely for the sake of not changing.

The problem is, there is an entire competition that is completely pointless. That is a negative. You are never going to get an entire season where every team has something to play for unless you have a very short season. But this system has increased the number of games Wakefield will play by 3 and those games mean nothing.

And yes im sure Wakefield fans are happy they are 'safe by july' but how attractive is that going to be for the next 6 weeks? How many people will bother with the super 8's next year if Wakefield carry on as they have started?

When the split happened, there were 9 points from 6th to 12th, and 7 from 6th to 11th. A 28 game season would have given us another 10 points to play for.

It's funny on a topic lamenting a relentless change in structure the one thing that has been a constant, and a roaring success - The Grand Final, once again has the old chestnut of people suggesting it should be scrapped ''I've always thought top o'league should be champs me, like''. The grand final has been around for 18 years it's cemented into the games calender, it has built up some history and some tradition. It's not going to be scrapped, it's here to stay.

No doubt the route with which you get there will be though, and many more times.

Well, we haven't seen how a team fares after promotion via this system (or how a team fares from relegation). We haven't seen whether the gap between 4th place and 7th/8th is always going to be unattainable. We haven't given enough time to see clear trends in crowds, or financial results. It's too early to write it off IMO and it may be that in the fullness of time you're proven correct.

Whether it's working or not is subjective. You obviously feel it's not working and never will, which is fine, I've seen you offer this opinion on threads before and know you were a fan of the licensing system. Both systems have their merits and their negatives, but licensing was far from perfect too.

If you had a completely clean slate, how would you structure the competitions?

Fully agree. The GF has been a huge success story.

The people who want to scrap playoffs/GF are usually those who follow football closely, who prefer their system of declaring champions, unaware of the history and tradition within our game of using the playoff/GF method.

The way they pour scorn on it saying "it's only a money making exercise" or words to that effect, just show how marrow minded they are. In a sport that badly needs money, success stories & attention, they'd happily scrap it - bonkers.

There are a lot of short sighted folk on here. A little like James Rule.

Too many want success instantly without having to build for it.

Look at Hull this season compared to last season. In 2015, they scrape into the top 8, with no chance of making the top 4, however they were comfortable in the knowledge they would not be anywhere near the possible trap door of relegation. This allowed Hull to field may youngsters / academy players (Abdull, Turgett, Downs, Fash, Logan plus a few others) to gain some SL experience. This also enabled any player with an injury to concentrate on getting fit for 2016 without the possibility of being drafted in and aggravating that injury.

I firmly believe, that experience has helped Hull this season.

Trouble is it's a very tough sport. In many ways too tough to play every week and certainly not when there's nothing at stake. That's if the intensity isn't to dip substantially that is. We all know league is probably the most compelling sport when two well-matched and motivated teams feature. The downside is the contrast when the teams are less motivated - not that I blame them, they take a pummelling every week and wouldn't be human if they didn't drop it a notch or two. Few other sports face this dilemma; boxing would, were the fighters expected to fight every week; footballers would were they to take the proper kicking that many of them deserve; union would were their squads smaller. But you're right to say there'll always be dead rubbers, problem is that the game's entertainment value suffers from them disproportionately.