Toulouse22v Rochdale 24. Well done.

that is one massive surprise, and doesn't give the rest of us much hope, good job we were playing barrow.
wonder what the odds are for Toulouse not to get promoted now!

what the

No not really. The best team in the League knocked out. Can't see them making the same faux pas in their next home game. Call it sour grapes all day wrong but I cannot congratulate Rochdale.

Time to sign out and follow SO's principles. The game has gone, this is madness.

There's always next year

Oh heck, if we beat Barrow (unlikely but not totally out of the question) we'd face Toulouse but imagine if Barrow beat Toulouse in the final ... we'd have Toulouse and Toronto in our league next season.

That would be a nightmare!

Toulouse were outplayed for most of the game playing the way Donny did but for 80 minutes. Toulouse are beatable again and remain vunerable now. Whoever comes to france will have a good chance as i'm not sue the players can be lifted after this. Yep, next season will be fun if Toulouse fail again......

The pressure on the players over the two games (assuming they beat York) will be immense. I'm please they've been beaten but not all together happy that Rochdale get promoted on the back of dual reg, I really dislike the system!

As a group, on this forum, we seem to be mainly of the opinion that automatic promotion seems fairer than promotion through play-offs. Toulouse have clearly been the best side throughout the regular season. They’ve been unbeaten in 21 games. They now face the prospect of two more testing games to get what most of us probably think they deserve.

I’m a Dons fan through and through but I don’t feel particularly comfortable at the thought of us going up this season. Over the year other teams have been better than us. The league table tells us that. They deserve it more than we do. If we’d finished second and then not got promoted I wouldn’t feel too happy about someone else getting what I’d feel we deserved either. The cookie crumbles both ways.

I’m not a great fan of Super League declaring the champions as the team that wins the Grand Final. The team that finishes top of the pile after 30 games should be declared Champions. They get “the league leaders shield” which by definition sounds like a minor title with little meaning, especially in today’s world where we hype everything up to levels they don’t deserve. Whatever happened to League One, League Two and League Three? Everyone knows where they stand with a simple structure like this, but that’s another story. Super League, Championship, Championship One. Bah, why make it more complicated than it needs to be?

The idea behind the structures we have in rugby league at the moment are designed to keep more teams interested for longer by not having straight promotion and relegation. I get that. Our season would have been over much sooner had it not been for the play-off structure. We would have had little to play for in our last few games.

What do we really want? Do we want a structure that gives everyone a chance for longer or a structure that is inherently fairer? For the credibility of the game I think we need a structure that is fair. After all do we really want to be playing 21 warm up matches in our league for everything to hinge on the last couple of games?

We need to give the players a lot of credit though. They turn out every week and do their best whether they’re playing for something or whether they’re playing for nothing. This applies at our level and at Super League level. Widnes had nothing to play for at Wigan the other week but put in a performance as though their lives depended on it. Castleford went to Catalans yesterday with a depleted squad and turned them over even though they couldn’t make the play-offs.

The Dons knew that a win in their last home game against Skolars would give them a play-off place. They knew this before their tough schedule at Rochdale and York earlier the same week. Did they relax and focus on the home game? No, they went out to win every match and were a credit to themselves and the game.

I don’t have a problem with the integrity of the players and the clubs. I have a problem with the integrity of the system.

Maybe Toulouse will get promoted by beating York and Barrow or the Dons but that won’t make a bad system right. It may take something like Toulouse NOT to get promoted to make the RFL think again about their structures.

Gary Thornton suffered a similar fate when he was coach at York. They won the league and didn’t get promoted. Nothing was done to change anything then, and I suspect the same might apply now although it’d be interesting if Toulouse told the RFL they couldn’t afford to carry on playing at this level due to lack of income and offered to resign from the league.

As far as the Dons are concerned, facing both Toulouse and Toronto next season would be a very stiff task indeed. We’d have to smarten our squad up considerably if we wanted to hold any hope of not being in the Third Division in 2018.

All of this may come to nothing if Toulouse win their next two matches. Everyone will wonder what all the fuss was about but does that make it right?

Great post DM.

Briefly, Isn't the idea of the play-offs to prolong the competitions and get more 'meaningful' games in rather than a simple P & R system which could mean an interesting run-in for most of the clubs belwo the top few ? I don't mind the present system though DMs idea of an 8 team league which each team playing each other 3 or 4 times sounds good with maybe a top 6 play-off system to find the promotion candidates and a shoot out for the bottom 2 for the relegation place for example.
It would be a travesty if Toulouse didn't get promoted I suppose considering they have been the best team and the potential problems next season for the rest could be alarming, even causing the demise of a few clubs. I really fear for te C1 if TO13 & Toronto are in the same C1.
I personally feel TO13 will get it together against York and Barrow assuming injuries from yesterday don't play a part...
Houles needs to motivate; not omething i'm convinced he can do judging by yesterdays performance and team selection. One thing's for sure, his position will becom pretty untenable if the team doesn't win both games I would imagine..

I couldn't agree more, the fact that they lost yesterday wasn't part of their game plan and will surely have upset some of their financial backers. If they don't get promoted, it will be a big problem for both Toulouse and the RFL. Clearly, if your top dog at the end of the season and lets face it unbeaten in 21 games makes you top dog and for me automatic promotion!

There's a lot wrong with the RFL but if your a SL club then it's "I'm OK Jack".

I do not think we will know the final lineups in the championship and C1 immediately after the final play off match.

Top should have gone up next four in semis for next promotion place.
Who's to say York can't win next week after yesterday, it could be us at home in final v York. And no promotion for Toulouse which would be a travesty.

If Sheffield hit the skids it will create an interesting dilemma. If they cease to exist I would imagine that only one team would be relegated from the Championship, with Sheffield counting as the second relegated team. That would give a reprieve to Whitehaven who managed to get off the bottom in the final game of the season today when beating Swinton.

Or, if Toulouse don't get promoted, could the RFL promote three teams, to help save their blushes?

If that happened, I think Whitehaven could well challenge the ruling.