TBF I dont mind if we finish 1st or 2nd as it means very little, in fact by Leeds finishing 2nd it would probably mean we dont have the pressure of beating the team we chose in the semi... anyway, as long as we beat Rovers at OT then thats all that counts in my book.

What a cheek. It's the Leeds fans who had reclassified the hubcap. To them the hubcap was stupid, unnecessary and they didn't want it, their prize was the GF victory. Now they are in a position to win it almost 20,000 people turn up.

I think the amount of people who don't like the play offs and GF is spread equally amongst all teams. There are plenty of supporters of all teams who don't like it.

Saints fans have, on the whole, never bigged up the shield. There also hasn't ever been an usually large crowd when we've been receiving it either.

saints won the hubcap

You're right on your last point, I actually ended up in a prolonged argument on the Saints forum a couple of years ago after you'd won the LLS and I was trying to congratulate your team

My position on the trophy has always been the same throughout superleague - Sky have wrongly diverted the attention from the most consistent team of that season to the one who can win three (or four) knock-out rounds in a heavily biased format competition.

Obviously they do this to promote their own interests but they've gone further than that by virtually ignoring the league title in favour of the Grand Final concept - I think the GF is an excellent competition, the play-off format always was an excellent end of season competition but it never distracted form the other major trophy that had been awarded at the end of the league rounds - we don't have that major trophy any more and anyone who takes the time to have a lok at the old league leaders trophy and compare to the hubcap will understand how its been so demoted.

The great shame is that supporters of the game who have only ever known superleague have bought Sky's marketing in its entirety.

The LL shield only has any credibility as a trophy if all sides have identical fixtures. This year has been slightly better with only the magic weekend spoiling things (Saints would be level with Leeds otherwise). The previous seasons' five or six extra games rendered it utterly meaningless as a trophy.

Finishing top is great for your GF prospects and should be the aim, as a measure of who is the best it's irrelevant.

Finish top after 27 games is irrelevant but 2 knock games are

So why not just play 2 knock out games and stop wasting time with the other 27?

Seems logical

It gets even worse this year when your allowed to pick your own opponents, to me thats the sign of a marketing lunatic being allowed to call the shots instead of a competition purist.

There's nothing wrong with the end of season play-offs culminating on a fantastic night out at Old Trafford.

There's also nothing wrong with properly celebrating the 26 or 27 week long consistency of a team who have finished top of the league, nor for instance in celebrating a side like Huddersfield this year who have shown their own consistency.

The problem comes when Sky start promoting the league fixtures as a prefix to the end of season play-offs and supporters start following them sheep-like in believing that actually, the league is only part of the play-off system - its not.

Its time we started to celebrate the league achievers and not wait until October (and my argument has been consistent for years in that respect)

Show me a person who blindly recites Eddie Hemmings in dismissing the LLS and I'll show you a person who has only been watching RL in the Sky Superleague era.

Can't have both those things, mate. I agree that a league is a better way of working ou who the best side in a year was in terms of accuracy, but the danger of a runaway title depriving the whole league of any meaning makes it untenable for SL. People don't seem to recall how different the Premiership was from the GF of today.

I disagree, I believe that you can have both things.

I take your point and maybe they did have to do something when you had a team who won every trophy going for seven or eight years and still dominated up until a few seasons ago - but we've seen for at least a couple of years now how the salary cap is working, and how it will continue to work in future and we're probably as close to a "fair" fixture list now as we've ever been (ok its still not perfect).


How would football supporters feel if winning the Premiership Trophy at the end of April was consigned to a plate and the hope that they'd now go on to win the European Championship ?

I think the Bulls sealed the fate of first past the post with the procession of 1997. Had there been no relegation, seasons would have started dying in April and everyone would have been done and dusted by July.

As it is, we now have a situation where even a team as seemingly dead and buried as Bradford were a few weeks ago have seen their season revive (jinx for this afternoon), while in Australia what would have been an intriguing battle between St George and the Doggies has been expanded out to include eleven teams right up to the penultimate week.

The prestige of the title is key. I guess it comes down to gut feeling, but I don't think the Premiership can be raised above tinpot status without alloting it the title of champions. The LLS does have its own prestige, born of that longstanding respect for the league ladder. It' not perfect but for once, the status quo in SL in this regard is probably the best it can be.