We don't have Automatic P and R

If that was the agreed set up at the start of a particular season then why not subject to certain qualifying criteria?

because it would massively damage any league 1 club to ask them to play amateur RL for at least a year, and very few amateur clubs are in anyway capable of functioning as a semi-pro club?

Essentially yes , at that level there isn't necessarily the need to relegate

Obviously all dependant on if the amateur club wants to become professional

So no real issue , just mischief making to suggest it

I agree and understand that 'our' co correspondent was probably having a casual prod on their keyboard for a bit of close season sport

Realistically teams and fans of those teams know at the start of the season that they probably won't win anything so just because when it comes to the 8s they don't really stand a chance of getting in the top 4 shouldn't come as a surprise and shouldn't be seen as unfair. There are always good teams and worse teams and that's the way it is. Better recruitment and finding a better coach is what people should be bemoaning for why their club has no real chance of the top 4, not the system.

The problem isn't that not all clubs can win, that much is obvious. The problem is that whole section of the season is utterly pointless and it's a very long season.

Like i said in an earlier post, there will be years when it will be far tighter between teams in the super 8's and people will be saying how great it is and we will have some great matches as sides slug it out to make the play off positions.It's a shame we have had it cut and dry for the first couple of seasons of this format, with teams 5-8 already cut adrift, but i feel given time people may have a different view.

It's simple maths that it will be rare for that to happen. There are relatively very few permutations of results that will create that situation. Not only that but because they only play each other those few permutations narrow massively every game of the super 8s.

It is a convoluted and competitively unfair system put in place to try and manufacture 'jeopardy' that will fail to do so except in relatively rare circumstances.

all team have 23 games up until the split into the 8's. If you are in the super 8's vying to make the top 4 but are 10+ points behind the leaders then the team only have themselves to blame...not the system.
If they had performed better in at least 5 of the games they lost they would be closer to the top, if you start again from scratch for the super 8's you then devalue the previous 23 games and it wont be long before teams who have made the 8's with games to spare would rest players and coast......

Not every team in a 12 team league can win the title....there will always be dead games in a league system whatever that may be....it's just making sure you are at the pointed end of the stick when the split comes

They could up the ante a little by awarding 3 points for a win in the super 8s. This would at least prolong the illusion that 8th could become 4th.

The point is that this system exacerbates that.

It's all very well saying that team needed to perform better, but every game that team wins is a game another team loses. It's only a few specific run of results that can possibly produce a situation that keeps it competitive.

We have extended the length of the competition but for the majority of teams the majority of times the majority of those games are dead rubbers.

It's not the majority of teams which have deadrubber games, the majority of games in the S8s mean something. The only games which are deadrubber games are the ones played between teams who can't mathematically make the top 4 (eg Widnes vs Wakefield this season) and even they still have pride and finishing position to play for. Games such as Hull vs Wakefield in the S8s are far from being dead rubber for one of the teams (had Wakefield won then Warrington would have been awarded the LLS a week earlier).

The teams who find themselves in the middle 8 need to concentrate for all of their games so they have no deadrubber games. Roughly 10% of all the games during the super 8s this year had less meaning, I don't think that's too bad