good friday there will be a brilliant atmosphere and if we perform like we did last we'll get smashed to pieces by Stains. he can't exactly go blaming the atmosphere then.

Even thou we played very badly, London actually outplayed us in the first half, they didn't make a mistake, it was all wigan dropping the ball, throwing it away…

next friday is going to be a very apprehensive day for us.

I know but the previous post by pie.warrior is something I advocated late last year when all the restructuring debate was going on.

That system would really reward top spot, and to some extent second, and more importantly make it harder to win from third or fourth. Under that system it would be impossible for a 3 v 4 Grand Final.

I think that is too big a reward for 3 & 4. One game away from a GF for finishing 4th? This is just a cup competition and I think a playoff should do as others have suggested and make it harder than that for the lower finished teams to get to the GF.

I don't think this will do anything to improve the fans views of playoffs in general.

There probably are better ways of doing a 4 team playoff but I think the fact there will be more games during the season has been taken in to account so there is only going to be one round of playoff games before the GF. The fact there will only be 4 teams that qualify will mean it is less likely a team can accrue points early then take their foot off the gas because doing that would risk dropping out of the top 4 altogether.

I also question whether a week off for the team going straight through the final (in pie warrior's suggestion) is much of a reward, that part of the season is about building momentum so a week off could end up actually being a disadvantage.

I know the system coming in next year isn't perfect but it's much better than what we currently have. It should result in more games with a higher intensity, more emphasis on winning the league and no reward for mediocrity. The playoffs are nice and simple, no 2nd chances, just a simple 1v4, 2v3 knockout to reach the final.

Since the beginning of SL, 12 out of the 21 times a team has earned a week off during the play offs, they have gone on to win the following week. I'm not sure whether that proves anything either way to be fair.

Yeh I think sometimes it's a big help to have a rest and let the players rest up and clear any niggly injuries, but sometimes it's good to build momentum and keep it going. It needs to be viewed in the context of the season, I don't think you can categorically state a week off = advantage.

For example, in 2010 we went out of the CC at the QFs so had a couple of weeks off already come play off time, then we were pretty poor against Leeds in the first week of the POs and ended up losing by a point. We then backed up with 3 convincing victories and ended up as Champions. I honestly don't believe we'd have won the GF that year if we'd sneaked through against Leeds in week 1, it was like we needed the extra game to put things right.

Then in 2011, we played Saints at home having won the CC and therefore played every week without a break (+ the WCC), we desperately needed a victory in the first week of the POs to get a week off, that didn't happen and we ended up limping out in the semis.