Play offs for me, they're one of the traditional aspects of the game that i'm glad Sky brought back. Hull have won the title 3 times in their history, 2 of those wins came in grand Final play offs.

With Mrs B on the 8 team format, it started at 5 then 6 and then 8 so why not go the whole hog and just have an end of season super league cup for everyone to play in and declare the leaders champions.

I agree, the game has moved on and the playoffs are here to stay. Teams would approach the league differently if the playoffs were not part of the system.

No disputing that under the current rule. I thought the OP was asking whether or not people thought the rule was the right way to determine the winners of the comp.

Agree,a team slogs its way to the top all season,they are therefore champions.

The playoffs should be top six I.M.O.

Play-offs have been used for more years to determine the champions of our sport, as opposed to a simple table-topper

True,but my own thoughts are if a team has battled all season to get to the top,it is surely harder than beating a team in the play off who may be having a bad game.

Quite apart from being factually incorrect, this assumes that all clubs would have played exactly the same had there been no playoff system in place at the beginning of the season. Ignoring reality in favour of personal preference simply isn't rational. Like it or not RL is currently using it's traditional method of selecting the champions - the playoffs.

It's worth pointing out that for quite a large part of the time SL has been in existence the playoffs have been a far fairer method than top of the tree anyway, as the fixture list was lopsided and not all clubs played the same mix of fixtures.

I don't really have a problem with the playoffs. I'd prefer the number of sides involved to be fewer but the mechanism employed pretty much guarantees that nobody outside the top 4 stands much chance of a GF appearance anyway.

That element of luck can still be a factor in a straight league competition. In fact it pretty much always is. Look how close it was between Wigan and Wire this season for instance.

How I see it too provided the fixtures were configured so that every team plays every other team twice.

Not disputing that Kosh,but say,if by some miracle Hull won the G.F. can we honestly say we are better than Wire this season?

if you win the league fixtures, you win the league, if you win the playoffs you win the playoffs, two separate competitions IMHO.

The original play offs back in the old days were due to the size of the league.

With only 14 teams it's crazy that a team finishing in the bottom half of the league could go on to become Champions (albeit very unlikely).

By the rules of the competition we're all in? Yup.

You're as good as your results make you.

Thats why coming first is better than 8th.

Anyhow,lets agree to disagree on this one.