Firstly, congratulations to Leeds....last night they were class, never panicked when they went behind, and played like Wire, with great pace, and unlike against Wigan, continued to play open, flowing rugby!!! But I do believe they have hit upon a flaw to a degree with the play-off system:
finish 1st or second and you have atough game against 3rd or 4th,
finish 5th or 6th you play an easier home tie against 7th or 8th,
Win their game, and ok they play away, but are playing against a team that has lost and maybe low on moral/confidence, as play-off games must take something away mentally, while being high on moral/confidence themselves,
Win that game and they are playing against a team that will have lost some momentum for having a week off, as well as even more confidence/moral,
Bang ....in the final!!! This is the real one off game with all at stake, and Leeds have proved they have the big match experience to pull this one off, and would be wholely confident!!!!

Despite all this....finishing 5th or 6th you are playing instant knockout rugby, and it takes some nuts to pull it off!!!! So again well played Leeds!!

Matt

I've moaned about the play off system for years, Leeds fans that come on here are getting the wrong idea, we (well i don't begrudge leeds) it's not the play off's per se that i don't like. It's the weekly rounds that lack intensity because of the play off system.

The weekly rounds lack intensity............. because there are to many teams in the league

Cut the league to 10 teams and play a top 5 playoff

Leeds
Warrington
Wigan
Saints
Catalan
Huddersfield
Hull/HKR merged
Wakefield/Cas merged
Bradford
London

But the lower clubs will not agree this and the speccies will not pay increased gate charges to fund the reduction in games.

No club would ever agree to a merger if they wanted to avoid rioting every home game, and calling for teams to be merged simply because they finished lower in the league recently is insulting for everybody. I remember the fury at the idea of merging Wire and Widnes back in the day - how would the Rhinos fans feel if they were merged with Bradford to 'improve the league'?

I've said it before and still people seem to be ignoring it and talking nonsense about mergers and splitting the leagues instead - we need to bring more money into the sport, through better marketing and better rights deals, so clubs can afford to build up their youth teams [iand[/i to spend to a higher cap to keep our better players.

I remember when warrington went to leeds very early in the season, neither team seemed that bothered about winning it, in fact jamie peacock said that. That is nothing to do with number of teams that was 2 of the best coming together. There is very little to be gained coming top, so why worry. Under the old league system that would have been a blood and thunder game.

I think that the problem is that 7 of the top 8 picks itself.

the salary cap doesnt work because it does not govern every cost that can influence player performance. The feature on your lad Fitzpatrick (Forget his firstname, the ex Salford Full back) on sky last week shows how much time energy and money can be spent by some clubs on player welfare, and recovery.

Last year at Bradford we spent the full cap. To do this, even before we went T**s up, the club had to shed people in other areas of the organisation over a number of years. How many full time staff does Mr Moran support at the Wolves?

the way to improve the competitiveness of the sport is to create the real threat that a club might not make the playoffs! The only way to do that realistically is to reduce the playoffs back to a top 5!

Perhaps moving the CC back to Mayday bank holiday weekend might enable clubs to do a leeds? Getting up for two big matches in 8 weeks proved too much for leeds as they were well underdone in the wembley final.

Both comps need looking at as the CC is very important nationally for our game (perhaps more so than a london club!).