Agreed the Broncos/Dragons match was the game of the season so far.

Maybe Hull's terrible afternoon might have had something to do with their director of rugby deciding to take the sky pound at Wigan rather than assisting his own team.

The top five system was by far the best that we've had. It gave appropriate advantage to those teams that finished higher, had (IIRC) no chance of generating 'repeat' fixtures until the final itself and it lent itself to much more competitive matches.

Unfortunately, Super League has become very much a "everyone can take part" and "everyone gets a trophy" environment. The fact that you can fail to win more games than you do win and still be in contention for the play-offs, never mind actually in them, sums up the problem.

How can standards improve when the "goal" for so many is to be just below average? We need to get back to a 12 team league and a five team play-off format.

better be careful there tonto...i don't wanna have to get legal on your ass.

It aint simply a case of there not being enough players. The difference between the two comps is that the top clubs sign and retain the best players in the UK. The problem with our sport is that when one team overpowers another, one sided games are not entertaining.

The NRL is structured so that the clubs have similar budgets, there certainly aint the difference that our clubs operate with. The successful sides in the NRL are the teams who recruit sensibly, are well coached and perform as a team.

You are a pot head pixie and I claim my free flying teapot

I'm not sure I fully understand your logic on this one. Granted, a team can make the play off’s with a negative win/loss ratio but I’m not sure that would therefore have a negative effect on standards

Take this scenario. With half a dozen rounds of Super League season to go, if two teams playing each other were in with a chance of making the play off’s then that game would surely be of a higher intensity than if the same two teams were floundering around in mid table mediocrity with nothing to play for?

It could be argued that HKR got beat at the weekend because they were pushing hard in the last 3 or 4 rounds of Super League for that last playoff spot and those matches would have been played out in a very different way if they meant nothing

The first few playoff games have been disappointing but equally it was a good end to the regular season with a number of teams fighting for spots in the top 8

I think the current system is absolutely ridiculous if I'm being perfectly honest - I think alarm bells should be ringing when Wigan-Saints only pulls in 12,000 which is purely down to a) knowing there could be several more games to come at full whack and b) neither side being eliminated despite losing. Realistically, you gain no more huge advantages from finishing first as you do fourth.

I also think it's not seen as as much of an achievement for actually getting in to the play offs when it's a top 8 - clubs need to miss out every now and then to realise the true value of achieving a play off spot. a 1v4, 2v3 straight play off for the Grand Final would potentially be epic, but there's no way the RFL would allow it because of the loss of revenue by giving up umpteen play off games.

That's why English RL will never amount to anything. We're always putting money [ibefore[/i the game, rather than [iin[/i the game.

Top eight is ridiculous. As someone posted, the league table is basically a drawn out way of deciding whick teams are too to qualify, rather than who are the best. The 8 team system is long and confusing.

I skyplussed friday and saturday's game in order to have a day long rugby marathon on Sunday which i was really looking forward to. I was very dissapointed, with 3/4 games.

Apart from only rewarding top finishers, the top 5 system has the following advantages:
The advantage between is league finish position is clear, but at the same time, because the average standard of team is better (obviously), meaning the 5th placed team probably has the quality to at least trouble the top teams (see cas in '99). Was there ever a chance that HKR were going ot do anything against the big teams?
There are fewer fixtures, so from the off there is a big game feel which I don't think can be said about some of the fixtures we've just seen.

Sky will want more teams in to have more matches, but if the quality is low then its a poor advert and therefore a false economy.

Whilst I don't necessarily disagree with much else you posted, this bit is wrong. Wire got to play the 4th placed team at home. Hudds had to go to the best team in the comop and play them at their ground. That is a pretty big ask for starters. Us playing Hudds at our place instead of the Galpharm, was a huge advantage!

4th can never get the advantage of Clubcall (although tbf it will probably never be used tactically anyway).

But you still get another chance so it means clubs can basically write off week one and concentrate on instead winning their home game in week two. All of these second chances just complete removes the sudden death aspect which is surely the big selling point of the play offs.

So let's assume Hudds 'wrote off' week 1. They now need to play Leeds (a tough game for them) and if they win that their reward is an away tie at Warrington (most likely). Surely they will have gone all out in Week 1 to pull off a shock and have a nice tie back at the Galpharm in two weeks?

The benefits to Hudds beating Wire the other night were pretty massive tbh.

Do you think there has been the same intensity to play off games where teams know they have a second chance versus those with sudden death elimination?

If we're sticking with the top 8 lets at least go 1v8th and so forth. Maybe a couple of one sided scorelines in week one but at least tough games arent artificially created and doing it from 8th would become a monumental task whereas 1st and second would be much more rewarded

The Wigan v Saints game had the highest level of intensity of all four games.

The Catalans v Hull KR game or the Leeds v Hull had no intensity and they were knockout.

Like I say, I don't disagree, but the fact is there have just been some freak games this year.

Last year Leeds beat Wigan by 1 point, and the Saints v Wire game was a cracker in Rd 1. The least intense game was the Hull derby which was knockout. The next four knockout games were not particularly close (apart from the Wire v Hudds game which looked like a cakewalk for Hudds at one stage).

I am slowly coming round to the opinion that we should potentially go back to top 5, but not because of these couple of things that you have highlighted.

The problem I've had with the 5v8 and 6v7 games that I've seen since the top 8 came into force is that some teams have looked to me to be trying to avoid losing as opposed to going out to win. You would think that these games would be the most intense of the first week playoff games as the teams involved are trying to stay alive but it hasn't been the case.

In a 14 team comp it should be top 6 imo.

Wk1: 3v6, 4v5
Wk2: 1v2 (winner progresses to GF), 5or6v3or4
Wk3: loser of 1v2 v winner 5or6v3or4
Final: Winner Wk2 v winner of week 3

This rewards the minor premiership much more than currently, doesn;t promote mediocre teams into the finals. To win it from outside the top two would reqrie 4 wins on the trot. Only downside would be just one game in Wk3 for TV.

What does that even mean? Surely if you are trying to avoid losing you are trying to win (ignore the draw)? You can hardly accuse Hull and Hull KR of negativity, they have simply been blown away by better teams on the night.

Thats the old system but its always the 1v2 just acts as a dress rehearsal for the same teams to play again in a fortnight. I stopped watching that game each year because it was pointless

Oh right. Criticism and questioning will not be tolerated. I get it.



(although.... quite how you'd 'get legal' would be interesting. Surely as a plaintiff you'd need to prove on balance that no 'jiggery-pokery' of the salary cap had occurred at Warrington. Cue much public examination of HJS closets in the search for skeletons. I'd be confident of seeing off any legal action. That's if you or anyone else dared to bring a case - instead of prefering the method of censorship-by-bully-boy-threat)

Unfortunately the burden of proof rests with you for making such claims.
All the top sides are clever with the salary cap anyway, none are breaking it

I would have a 20 team league with a champion league style like draw to make the fixtures and play everybody once and the play offs would be knockout with the top team making club call.

Not really, the top NRL teams have a budget of $20mill+ whilst the poorest teams operate on around $14mill. The gap in incomes is much greater than the haves and have nots of SL. Probably a factor is the poorest teams often have the biggest jnr nurseries.

With regards to some games being uncompetitive I don't think top 8 is to blame, though I personally don't like top 8 as a concept, nor do I think the league as a whole is uncompetitive. As others have said before me Huddersfield were 4th and we should remember that they had beaten Wire twice already. Granted the situation would have been made worse should we have had 1st playing 8th (one would imagine) but it isn't necessarily the cause of the weekend's bore-fest.

In my opinion the main reason individual games can be lob-sided (all through the season) is down to the number of games teams play and the frequency at which they are played. When you think about it, if Huddersfield can beat Warrington twice but then get hammered on another day, it can't be that the calibre of the players or squads is mismatched. Rather it must be fluctuations in form (which I think is caused in large part by fitness when one considers how integral controlling the ruck and the speed of the game is to the end result). Playing a game of Rugby League every single week takes its toll on players and squads, which means that teams will have fluctuations in fitness and form. Two teams could be pretty evenly matched but if one in a trough whilst the other is in a peak the individual game will be lobsided.

Now it could be argued that the teams that best manage the strain on their squads, through better fitness regimes and the like, deserve to win more games against their close rivals and as such, proponents of this argument would see fitness as a valid marker of difference for sport. On the other hand, to increase the spectacle we could reduce the strain on players and squads by reducing the number of teams in the league, thus reducing the number of games they play, and then incorporate rest-weeks (perhaps staggered rest weeks in the interest of the television audience so as to ensure games are played every week) which would in effect maintain the length of the season (e.g. 10 teams playing 18 or 19 rounds with every 3rd week rested). This could potentially increase the intensity of the regular season and reduce some of the high score-lines.

When it comes to play-offs I think the absence of sudden death must impact on the intensity of games from the players perspective and detracts from the spectacle from the fans perspective. Personally I think every game in the play-offs should be knock-out, otherwise we end up with a situation where a win is preferable but not essential. Hardly ingredients for edge of your seat stuff. The number of fans I've spoken to who were rather apathetic about the weekend's games and results is a sad indictment of these playoffs, but can we be surprised when they don't actually matter all that much in the grand scheme of things?

As well as having a full knock out playoffs I'd like to see some changes to the overall structure. First of all the top 8 has to be ditched. When deciding on a structure to the playoffs the RFL need to figure out the limits of legitimacy of the various possible outcomes. What I mean by this is they need to consider all the possible outcomes, including the least likely outcomes, and consider the legitimacy of them. Would they be accepted as legitimate outcomes, and if not get rid. In a top 8 playoff structure it is possible--though unlikely--that we could have a Grand Final of 7th v 8th where 8th become champions. Would the rugby league community, and indeed the sporting community in general, really accept 8th place as legitimate champions just because they won a few games after a generally poor season? Wouldn't it feel like they had won the play-offs but not "the comp" as a whole? How would that reflect on the sport? I wonder whether the RFL simply hope that this outcome never materialises, and if that's the case, why allow it as a possibility in the first place?

What would I do? League Leaders should go straight to the GF imo. We would then have 2 playoff rounds before the GF. Week 1: 2nd v 5th, 3rd v 4th. Week 2: the winners of week 1 play each other for a chance to meet the League Leaders in the GF. This would reduce filler games, reduce the complexity of qualifying games mixed with knock-out games, reduce the length of the play-offs as well as the intensity and, finally, tie the playoffs and GF much closer to the final League table.

Sorry for the length, I'm sure some will tl;dr

An interesting post. With regards to fitness, I think the main thing that sets SL way behind the NRL is fitness and conditioning. The talent does exist here, but the fitness levels are no where near what they are in the NRL. The amount of games in a season does have a bearing on the form and fitness of teams. I'd suggest two possible solutions;

1) Increase the number of clubs to 16, which sees eight clubs split between two conferences (play one MM fixture, everyone in your conference home and away, and everyone in the other conference once - four home, four away). That makes 23 games. Have a cup for the leaders of each conference, based solely on the standings after all matches between teams in that conference decided in July. Challenge Cup in August. Overall league standings, by combining the two conferences, and league leaders shield decided in September, Grand Final in October.

2) Keep the structure as it is, but cap the amount of league games a player can participate in to 20.

I'm not a great fan of the current play off format. I look at it from a different angle to a lot of posts on here. Three games and then the Grand Final is too expensive for most fans. This time of year is the most expensive for a fan. You have the play offs, the grand final, then there's the four nations, then you have to think about new season tickets, next seasons jerseys come out, next seasons fixtures come out, so you can start planning Catalans away and you have MM and whatever else. And, this is in the run up to Christmas.

It doesn't make sense then to have a complicated play off structure. You can't expect an entire support base of a club, who have jobs, kids, studies, family, holidays, whatever, to organise to be able to turn up en masse to matches when even the media commentators of the game struggle explain what is going to happen. You also can't expect massive success when you're expecting your fanbase to shell out considering all of the above. A simpler structure means more fans know what's happening, so will go. A simpler structure means clubs can better plan ticket offers.

Week 1; 1v8, 2v7 etc Top four have home advantage - losers out
Week 2; Highest ranked team vs lowest ranked, home advantage for highest ranked two - losers out
Week 3; Grand Final