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.

Its there choice if they want to play a reserve team every week and lose 80-0 every game the rfl cant do anything about it but it is a stupid thing to do as you will lose the goodwill of the fans and the attendances will nosedive. In my opinion you need some momentum going into the middle 8 playoffs as there is only 7 games and to get to/stay in the super league you are likely to need 4 wins.

Yes it will be tough for a Championship side to get promoted and i believe this system is worth a go it will be interesting to see how it pans out. My Prediction Leigh will be promoted to the Super League and Wakefield will be relegated

I'm not sure that Wakefield mean that they'll be playing their reserve team in $uperleague every week.

Here's the fundamental flaw in the middle eight. Provided we make the top four, yesterday's result counts for nothing.

We'll probably tweak it in a couple of years time and carry some results forward to the Eights Phase. Not sure how that would work, though.

Yep every minute won't matter if you are guaranteed a place in the middle 8s with a few rounds remaining, time to rest the squad up.

Just having a place is not enough. Finishing position determines fixtures and home/away balance. Bulls are rotating squad and will continue to do so.

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.