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