should it mean that the winners go straight to OT, or at least play one match and get there. would it be worth more winning the lls if the route to OT was much easier than coming second or third...or fifth...

Exactly - Tony Smith is so dismissive of the weekly rounds and league table position that, as a supporter, you sometimes question why the hell you should actually bother to go and watch the matches.

He isn't the only one guilty of this, and if we are being honest, at a time when we are pretty desperate for people and companies to pump money into our sport, the whole thing is a bit of a shambles.

A situation where 90% of the games are glorified friendlies/training sessions isn't a good one - The problem with having a play-off system is that it needs ALL the sides in the league to be competitive and, at least at the beginning of the season, to be in the hunt for the ultimate prize of champions.

Realistically, a play off system only works with a draft system, where squads are balanced more fairly, but I'm not sure that such a radical move could ever be brought in over here, though it would certainly be a lot more innovative and it would energise the sport a lot more than the silly and pointless clubcall.

So are you saying that the problem in our game is that it isn't competitive? Which team is running away from the rest so dominant that nobody can compete with them?

The last two years we've had 5th place winning and this year we may get 4th place winning. At the moment the reason the playoffs have come under scrutiny and the reason they appear to be a 'lottery' is because any one of us, Wigan, Hudds, Leeds could win, there isn't a clear answer on who is the best of those four teams. Back ten years ago when Bradford were at their peak you pretty much knew they were going to make the Grand Final however the playoffs were structured, it wasn't as much of a lottery then.

I agree with you on a draft system, US sports are fantastic because of the draft system but there's a key difference between their sport and ours which means we can't replicate it here: over there the professional clubs don't run youth teams, junior development is done by outside bodies, mainly universities/colleges. So new players can enter the draft and be picked, without a professional club having a claim on them. That wouldn't work here because how would we feel if one of our best Academy players, who had been developed at our expense, got picked in a draft by Salford just because Salford finished low in the league. We would probably stop developing young players.

Loose at wembley,gutted. Loose this farce of a competition, bit meh to be honest.

What is needed to accommodate the sky cup & also bring a bit more bite back to the league is to reduce the play offs to four teams which will eliminate teams 5 to 8 who just do enough to get to a play off place. If SKY are short of games then they could have a competition between the remaining clubs for a " best of the rest trophy" ,so giving even the lower clubs something to play for.

I agree the final 2 weeks of the play offs are more competitive, compared to it just being the final, but I was more pointing out that the league fixtures are a waste of time, because 8 or 9 of the clubs are no-hopers from the moment the season begins.

Ideally, to make a play off system work, we need a dozen Simon Moran's or Marwan Koukash's to take over the clubs and then you could fetch in a draft/auction system where players are shared among similar strength sides.