I know for a fact that Smith won't play next Monday

I'd rather us wipe that smug look from Smiths face

Never did Leeds any harm not winning against the top sides the last few years, we would also still be top anyway.
Beating or loosing to Wire in June means nothing at all.

Why not play the young kids against us. We will probably be fielding the old past its against you.

What's your other option?

The bigger picture shows what a farce the playoff system is that we can have these threads. The regular season games just don't matter, and something needs to he done.

It's quite simple really. If we have to have a play offs, and there are good commercial reasons for having them, then go back to the five team system. That really rewarded the team who finished top by ensuring that they only had to win one game to reach the Grand Final, and even if they lost that first game they had earned the right of the "safety net" game at HOME as a second chance.
Also the team that finished 5th had to play all their games away to get to the final.

Agree totally with Rogues. The original Top 5 system rewarded performances during the season by making it easier to qualify for the GF if one came top or second in the league - and rightly so. It didn't of course guarantee these teams' appearance in the GF - as can be seen by Wigan's reaching the GF from third and Bradford winning it from third.

Isn't the current top 8 system yet another example of Sky calling the shots - there are considerably more games in the top 8 than in the top 5 system and these are deemed to be "exciting" games. However, it just becomes almost another CC - but starting with the Q/Fs. No harm in that ( after all that is what the old style Premiership was), but it does not necessarily lead to the best team ( as proven by performances throughout the season) becoming "Champions".

It is quite feasible that Saints could hit form in September and become Superleague "Champions" after finishing 8th - they or anyone else only need to win 4 games to do so.

That's the right way forward. An alternative which the clubs might prefer would be to use the 6-team format we had from 2002-2008. Anything's better than 8 teams out of 14 getting into the playoffs.

Because it's a 4 pointer (i.e them losing is almost as important as us winning in terms of the table), and we need to get over this hoodoo we have when we play Wire. Isn't it also important for the strongest team to have experience of winning a crunch game? It's not like we have loads of chances to really test them throughout the season before the play offs

According to his blog, the Wire game is probably going to be a bit soon for Green. If we presume that Tomkins, Smith, McIlorum, Farrell are going to be back then we are looking something like:

Tomkins
Charnley
Goulding
Thornley
Richards
Powell
Smith
Lauaki
McIlorum
Mossop
Hansen
Farrell
Burke

Taylor
Crosby
Logan Tomkins
Hughes/Tuson


Fair bit of size and experience missing from that pack to play against Wire

I see Blake Green has named his newly born son Boston. That should give him God like status at wigan forever

I don't know to be honest I don't follow the Academy enough to make an informed judgement. We won the Academy Grand Final last year but Rogues would be able to say better than me what we've got coming through, if any of them are much good, or if the good ones are at other clubs.

Hindley Green has a bit of a ring to it.