Same here. It's a matter of changing the emphasis onto the importance of the league season. Sky changed the emphasis, it's time to change it back.

I agree with odem regarding league champions (yes CHAMPIONS) not league leaders. if it is a continuation of the league then team finishing 1st should go straight into the final as reward for finishing top. at the moment there is very little recognition for CHAMPIONS apart from home draws(wow!!!),and a hubcap*.If it is a different comp from league then leave it the same as it is and call winners GF winners GF champions not overall champions. See simples!!!!!

Id have it just the top 4

1st place - Straight to Old Trafford
2nd place - Straight to final eliminator

3rd would then play 4th (3rd gets home advantage)

2nd place team v winner of 3rd/4th match (2nd place team gets home advantage)

Or.....maybe your team could learn how a Super League title is won, no matter what position you finish. Leeds have won from 1st, 2nd and 5th. That's bona fide Champion quality, no two ways about it.

Do you honestly think if Spain had a 100% qualifying record for Euro 2012 and then won every match but lost the final, we would be suggesting they are the real winners? No chance.

I'm not going to be a pedant (as you appear to be brain dead)

But a wire fan can claim they are league chapions, league winners, league detroyers or whatever they want.

Wire on the league. Leeds won the playoffs. (Notice how the playoffs wren't in a leagu format; they were in a playoff format)

Your euro anolgy doesn't work because it isn't in a single league format. The playoffs are ultimately unnecassary and purely for money.

So the team finishing 1st gets the 'advantage' of going 21 days without a match, and going into the final without any match practice?

Well they could, but it would be slightly stupid considering the history books will declare Leeds as League Champions.

I would hazard this conversation wouldn't even be taking place if Warrington hadn't got so close and felt like they needed an extra helping hand to get them over the finishing line. Any team that thinks finishing top is enough, knowing perfectly well that is just the first part of the season, maybe needs to look closer to home rather than at the format.

Tony, a serious question.....As a paying spectator ( I presume?) ,does a good final 6 weeks of rugby make up for watching months of the dross you were served up earlier in the season?

I know you take the rough with the smooth as a spectator, but you'd surely have prefered to watch Wire this year, as a rugby fan, than the rubbish you lot were jeering most of the year?

Good job we finished in the top 6 then

Strange this debate doesnt happen at the beginning of the season but at the end after the top 2 teams have been knocked out and a team from 5th has won the Grand Final

This conversation has been had several times on the Wire forum since week one of the play-offs when attendances were apalling [check and you'll see!].

This is not a sour grapes thing like you think and we're not the only ones who think this. I've got exclusively footy supporting mates who think you being champions is a joke. I've actually been quite complimentary about your win so I don't know why you can't take on board some different opinions.

The current play-off system is plain wrong, although I think the play-offs (in some form, probably top five) are right to have.

Old top 5 system was better than the current top 8 arrangement, largely because the team finishing top went straight to the final if they won their first game.

Regardless of this though, I wonder if all this bleating would have occurred had Warrington ever managed to win the play-offs from a similarly low position as Leeds just have done.

We did it in 1986 from 4th, though I don't think we had the temerity to suggest we were better than the true champions, Halifax, even though we'd battered them in a play-off final....

According to Stevo after last nights game. If you don't agree with the playoffs the way Sky have manufactured it you don't love the game like he does.

Pretty sure he's a Leeds fan