Just imagine that at the start of the season each week you lose a star/top player through injury. Halfway through the season, 12 or 13 games gone, your languishing close to the bottom of the league then you start to get get your players back one by one. You scrape into the playoffs in 8th spot and your at full strength with your team all hitting their seasons peak fitness then you can go on to win the GF from the lowest qualifying spot. Sore losers the Wigan fans, almost think they have a right to win everything all the time.

Wigan are the best team this season regardless of the playoffs. The fact is all teams have ups and downs during a season but in a league format the best team tends to finish top 99% of the time.
Now we can have a team losing more than it wins during the season then string together 4 decent performances and win the "biggest" prize in RL.

When the play-offs started they had it just about right with the top 2 getting all the benefits as they have earned that right. They play in the first round and the winner is in the final. the loser then plays the team that rises to the top out of the next 3/4/5 teams. Now you finish top and still have to go on and win 2 more games to get to the final, so it starts to lose it's credibility and the only real benefit you have is a home tie which can count for very little in a knockout game.

That's how I see it.

I'm fine with a play off series to decide the champions but having more teams make the play offs than not is ridiculous. The current format does not give enough benefit to finishing top. You shouldn't have to win two play off games to get to the Grand Final if you finished top in the regular season.