I kind of like the idea of the play offs, just not happy with the format and the "weighting" (or lack of) for coming 1st in the league.

My suggestions would be either:

Separate out League & play offs. Whoever finishes top at the end of the regular season is crowned League Champions. There is then a separate play off series for the top 8, with 1st playing 8th, 2nd playing 7th etc. This culminates in the Final at OT. This is pretty much how things started off years ago, with te Stones Bitter Premiership at the end of the season. There's then also 3 prestigious trophies to go for. (sorry, but the league leader's shield is not really viewed as prestigious)

OR:

Play-offs involve top 5 teams only. 1st goes straight to the final (there's your reward for finishing top) 2nd - 4th play off to see who meets them.

come on lets stop this now........its fine the way it is.

even the toffs in the rugger world cup are saying France shouldnt be in the world cup final because they lost 2 games in the group stage.

Wales lost they go out, the other team go through whats the problem..?

We lost Leeds went through. Stop Whinging its bleedin Embarrassing not once have we questioned the playoff format in every other year of superleague. (except to discuss increasing the number of teams in the playoffs when we missed out by one place...)


total nobery of the highest order

I agree with the above but...

If we [ihave[/i to decide the Champions via a play off system, maybe this would be fairer.

Only teams that finish within, say, 8 points of the top are eligible with a maximum of 4 teams. If that's only one team then 1 & 2 would go straight into the GF.

If it's two then 2 & 3 play each other. Winner plays 1 in GF

If it's three then 1 v 4 and 2 v 3. Winners straight into GF

with all you lot going on about being 'rewarded' for finishing top, you seem to forget that the problem is any 'reward' has to be proportional to the margin by which you finished first, which is completely unknown at season start.

It's entirely possible next year you could have Leeds & Wire win 25 games, draw twice against each other and one finishes top on PD. Any massive 'reward' for finishing 1st would then be egregiously unfair.

It also devalues the GF when you could have a team with 3 weeks rest behind them going against a side which has had to win 3 straight away games.

Personally, I don't think there's anything wrong with the current system, given my additional preference for a 16 team superleague as opposed to 14.

I would, however, remove the club call and simply revert to highest v lowest in week 3.

Lets not forget, that in all this "what ifs", the RFL will only sanction a change to the play-off system if there are a lot of games for them to let Sky show...................... or should I say, "Sky would only sanction...!"

Scrap it, bring back the premiership playoff.