Least in the old setup there was a glimmer of an outsider in play offs causing a shock.

I remember Catalan nearly doing it. Granted we saw more blow outs then competitive games but there was a chance.

If we had straight play offs people would be calling Castleford the dark horses as they can beat anyone on there day.

Instead we have a cas side who will win games but won't actually get anywhere. I understand the argument that they should have been better in regular season but it just seems like the super 8's is a waste of time outside the top 5.

The problem with the old set up was that when the business time came, the big sides stepped up and blew the others away most of the time. This would be negated by improving the bottom of SL and bringing it up to the level of the top of SL.

But that is hard. So we tried bringing down the top of SL to the bottom, that didnt really work because even as wages equalised, big clubs could offer success, something others couldnt.

So when we decided that was to hard we gave up trying to improve standards and brought this nonsense in with the idea being if we keep pretending that there is something to play for people wouldnt notice that largely they werent playing for anything of any importance and the play-offs are now over before they have even really started.

As far as bringing the top down to the bottom, Leeds did really well this season

The playoffs don't start for another 7 weeks.

Erm, well done on counting i guess.

While you are at it, can you tell us how long they last?

I don't agree with this point. Either the status quo is maintained (they don't get promoted)...or they get promoted - happy days! Any club that doesn't have contingency to cover the worst case scenario isn't being run properly, but that's not down to any format that's down to the club, if they are poorly run things will go wrong regardless of the format.

The whole 'not knowing whether you're going up or not' thing will happen in any which way if you have a league with promotion and relegation. Does that mean you are advocating the ol' franchising thing?

hhj

Yep I'm advocating franchising.

And what you've said just isn't the case, last year a Wakey player, Scott Moore I think said after the MPG said it was so massive because players didn't know if they'd have jobs the next day if they didn't win. Are you suggesting that clubs can look to develop (something all RL fans suggests needs to happen) and get better with the shortfalls that potential relegation threatens.

Similarly do you think the likes of Leigh or Bradford stretch the wage budget this late in the day (Leigh signed Tickle and a couple of others right before the eights) or teams like Leeds and Saints or Wakey would resort to bringing an overseas player over rather than trying a kid.

Conversely look at the teams who have a chance of coming up, particularly London and Leigh (id have put Bradford in here if they'd have made it). They are made up of players already deemed not good enough for SL, they're not developing their own players, and can't afford to invest the time if they want to get up under the current system.

Imo this system of promotion is the ultimate short termism, we wouldn't get it with franchising, I don't think.

I can see why Rules wants the points resetting now, and there's still 10 mins to go

Interesting spin by the BBC on a few casual comments James Rule made when asked what he thought of the Super 8 format in a recent local radio interview.

You lot sucked it up like good 'uns.

Get back in your prams.

Looky what we have here! Someone is claiming franchising is the answer again! We've had that rodeo bud. Everyone said it sterilized the game and gave championship teams no hope and half the super league teams sod all to play for.

It's back to that whole point I made about about criticizing the present format and harping back to one that was previously criticized. Round and round we go.

When we have franchising it's terrible, the poor super league teams have nothing to play for because they aren't fighting for survival. When we have P%R....OH NO! Some super league teams don't know where they'll be next season, the instability is terrible.