I have just read that the coach of Wakefield following their 80-0 beating last night has said that he plans to focus on the last eight play offs. It was always going to be an uphill struggle for a Championship Team to compete with a Super League Team (esp given their budgets) but we are not even half way into the season and some are already talking about saving resources until the play offs. I was not a fan of the new relegation/promotion system but this is a farce and makes a mockery of the play off system. Surely they cant do this.

Don't think it'll make that much difference, you're still going to play everyone once. There are too many variables to start deciding whether you need to win - or indeed lose - to get a better deal in the Middle Eight. Just keep winning and keep up the momentum.

I think we gave up on "every minute matters" when we ditched the bonus point, brummie. If we didn't, we certainly did at some point during the game at Warrington on Setdy.

Griff,

I suggested it before the full anouncement of the middle 8 structure, you carry forward the points against the teams you have played during the 1st 23 rounds into the middle 8 (except for the extra game - blackpool summer bash) and then play the SL teams home and away, that would give every team the points from 14 games (home and away) against the other teams in the middle 8.

The current structure would allow say Fev to get stuffed home and away by Leigh/Bradford/Sheffield by 40 points a game in the regular season and somehow sneak ingto the middle 8 with these 3 teams. and then by some miricale get 4 wins and sneeak into 3rd in the middle 8 for promotion. It could never happen, could it????

And yet - if the status quo remains quo forever, the new system will be discredited.