How terrible would that be. The best two teams paying off to be champions more often than not, giving 3rd,4th and 5th outside chance.

I may be in a minority but to me that's the wait should be.

It is IMO so bad it doesn't provide a worthy way of determining the champions and my point is I think many fans take that view.



I know you are not the only one who says this but what interests me is are you happy that it does? It just seems a bit perverse to me to spend an entire season supporting the team possibly home and away in a competition you are probably better off finishing 5th in.



The reality is someone made the decision to adopt a play-off system to decide the champions yet provided a very poor competition to do so. That is leading to plenty of fans expressing the sentiment the LLS should mean more IMO. You can't polish a **** and so just because the like of Nigel Woods or Stevo will prattle on about how Leeds winning it from 5th was some mighty achievement anyone with any common sense can see that its easier to do that than win a challenge cup never mind top the league.

They can of course have the best of both worlds and revert to the top 5 system where finishing top is very worthwhile and the idea you can just enter the play-offs on top form doesn't cut it. At the moment we rely on the teams playing league games as if finishing top IS important. Otherwise we are being conned out of our season ticket money and may as well save everyone the bother and start the season next week.

That would get my vote because it means the idea the league is unimportant just does not cut it under that system.

I sometimes think the other formats that have been tried and have been adopted are favoured because it means there is a much greater chance of a side outside the top 2 winning it. Well to me that is like the "prizes for everybody" approach to school sports so derided in the press. "Your not that good but we will give you a second chance" is not the way to improve standards in the sport which was one of the major justifications of adopting the system.

Top 6 is IMHO the best.
Top 2 have to win 1 to get to the GF, but conversely have to lose 2 on the bounce to be out

1) the champions should go straight to the final -simple as that - a real reward for winning over the season.

why would you not want the best team of that season in the final?

2) 2nd place gets a semi-final spot already

3) everyone else has to fight straightforward knockout to get the final semi final spot

This way there is real reward for finishing top, some reward for finishing 2nd, and hard work for those in however many places they decide to go down -

if they go down to 8th place then;

8vs7, winner then goes on to play 6th, winner goes on to play 5th etc all the way up to the semi final spot with the 2nd place team. Real reward for where you finish. You can start from 6th or 5th place to speed the process up.

There would also be no rubbish repeat fixtures where we end up playing saints 3 times, etc.

Problem solved!

one massive problem with the above...if you had only top 5 the the league winner would not play until week 4...... probably too long to go without a competitive match

Pie Warrior,using the system below the league leaders would play in Week 3.

League Leaders to go straight into the final.

Wk 1 Preliminary Semi Finals,-- Match 1---2nd play 5th, Match 2---3rd play 4th.
Wk 2 Preliminary Final,-- Winner Match 1 plays Winner Match 2.

Wk 3 Major Final,-- League Leaders to play the Winner of the Preliminary Final at Old Trafford.

This would give the League leaders a three week break and make the other four teams who finished below them in the league play for the right to play at Old Trafford.

This way the League leaders would be rewarded for a consistant season.

No, I am not happy at all about the current play-off format, which is yet another massive error by the people supposed to be running RL.

I would be happy with reverting to the previous top 5 system.

Play off's have ruined the sport altogether. Finishing 5th and being champions wouldn't even make sense to an Irishman.

Scrap the ridiculous play off system and let the champions be the team that finishes top then have the Challenge Cup final the week after the season is over.

My old granddad won't watch rugby after the regular season as he says it is over when they have all played each other and the team who finished top were champions. Watches it all year and then switches off come September.


Also on another note. I would like to see us back in blue and white hoops for next years away strip. I miss it.