same here

should be top 12 in play-offs!

The only thing I dont like is the pick who you play part, but it may give the selected side a bit more fire so could be a good game. Without the top 8 a lot of sides wont have had anything to play for and attendances would have dwindled. At least theres no chance of the top 2 playing away in the 2nd and 3rd week of the finals.

I think the whole 'pick your opponent' thing is a bad idea. Mind you, it's bound to wind a team up if they get picked as the opposition is basically saying 'we think you are the weakest side left in the play offs'. Would be nice to see leeds pick someone like cas and then get stuffed!

It should just be a top six play off.

It's crazy that a team who finishes in the bottom half of the table and who lost more than half of their regular season fixtures could potentially be champions.

Think the top 8 devalues the true championship (ie the league leaders at the end of the season) even more than top 6 did. But TV pays and what TV says goes.

too early to say after only 1 game

but my first reaction is that it is better because there are more games

the playoffs get the biggest audiences for SKY, and showing more of them can only be good for the sports profile.

also under the old system most teams that finished 5th and 6th just lost their first game and that was that.

also imagine how poor the last few games of the season would have been if loads of teams had nothing to play for. Bradford had a chance of making the 8 and therefore it was a much better game than Hull-Bradford would have been after the appalling seasons both teams have had.

More should be given for actually winning the league...at the end of the day the team that does that has performed the best for the entire season...then the top eight should just play off for some trophy a la the old Premiership.

The top eight is a better concept for me and makes the end-of-season games a little more interesting with less dead rubbers. However the current format, for me, is not good.

IMO, there should be more of an advantage for the top two teams and it should be much more difficult to get to OT from 6th, 7th or 8th.

Perhaps a format closer to the old top 5 system would be better where perhaps the 5th-8th finishing teams have an extra elimination game in week 1 and maybe something more along the lines of a 1st v 2nd qualifying game in week 2.

WEEK 1 5 v 8 Elimination Game

6 v 7 Elimination Game


WEEK 2 an exact copy of the old top six format with 1 v 2 qualifying game and 3 v 6 and 4 v 5 elimination games


That would be much better than the current system.

But there does need to be some reward for finishing higher in the league if they do it in 2 lots of 4. The other option which i was originally in favour of was to revert back to the old top 8 approach of the premiership and make it 1v8, 2v7 etc.

Idont suppose bradford would have minded another round of super league?

what would be the point of another round of super league?

Perfect.

I think there is a tension between wanting to be fair to the team that finishes top and wanting the play-offs to be open and interesting.

The return of the Premiership is an interesting point. A third trophy for teams to qualify and compete for, while making the League leaders a 'real' trophy again makes sporting sense to me. Whether Sky would sacrifice the Grand Final is doubtful though.

1st vs 8th, 2nd vs 7th etc would be fine for the premiership, as the League Champions would already have their reward.