Next year has the potential to be very good.

Warrington and Wigan will be up there, as will saints as they always are. Hull have the squad and will take good experience from this year to push on. You would expect definitely Leeds and most likely Huddersfield to reverse their blip of this season and be back challenging, Catalan would be up there now if they didn't only play for half a season, and cas have established themselves as a top 6 team now and can trouble anybody when they want to.

Genuinely 7/8 teams who should all be challenging for the top 4 next year.

Hull KR and Salford, both had 31 games to avoid relegation, not one, Hull KR "cock"ed it up and therefore go down.

I agree apart from Hudds. I think their issues may run deeper and last a bit longer but will just make the top 8.

Wakey are still on very shakey ground with Chester in charge (trust me).

Leigh might surprise everyone and make the top 8 but probably won't bother the top 4.

Salford are still living on borrowed time. Money talks to bring in players, but who wants to play in front of empty stands?

I'm not saying they didn't deserve to go down. I dig only at the marketed game that is the million pound game.
Yes we all know the score but the million pound game will not last long... It's a ploy to entertain but it'll do more damage than not. As soon as somebody has a breakdown they'll scrap it.

I posted days ago that the MPG was a device created to help a Champ side get promoted. The RFL didn't have foresight that Leigh (or another team) might get auto promoted leaving 2 SL sides in the MPG. Only 4 sides have competed in the MPG and therefore only they can comment on what a ludicrous concept it is.

Promotion and Relegation are needed, but not this self imposed circus created by the RFL.

I don't know how you manage to cope.

Well done to Salford & commiserations to Hull K.R.

As a neutral I thoroughly enjoyed that, yet I can still hardly believe K.R. lost that game.

Indeed.

The game has a duty of care to its employees, therefore the creation of stressful MPG working conditions which stimulates mental health issues among players has to be discouraged.

It is clear that the solution would be to create an environment where all games become totally meaningless and stress-free.

No no, the Rfl didn't have the foresight to see that two super league sides, with many years of greater funding and advantages over championship teams would be so dog that they would end up in the million pound game.


When the middle 8s were unveiled, it was giving the championship clubs the illusion that promotion was available.

You've ed it up for yourselves.

Wakey are in no real trouble with Chester in charge, and with the addition of Kear into the coaching mix I'm sure they'll do just fine. They were hit badly with injuries later than other teams but for the back half of the season had around 11 starting players out just as other teams were getting players back from injury.

I've got to say that even though we were in the MPG last season, I still love the structure, it shows rugby in its rawest form where passion and belief are as important as skill

And those saying that the RFL didn't have the foresight to see a team automatically promoted are talking twaddle, the competition is set so that a championship team who finished in 1st/2nd stands a slightly better chance than the SL teams who finish in 11th/12th due to the additional home game when they've all been reset to zero

I agree. Although even if it wasn't the best ever, anything was going to be better than the old top 8 playoffs with convoluted "qualifying playoffs" and "elimination playoffs" where you could lose against someone one week then beat the very same team the week after and knock them out. I think the Super 8s have produced much better finishes to the season and we've had some absolute belters with closely fought games going down to the last minutes.

the new structure works fine for me. no matter the system, top 5,6 or 8 you will always have teams with nothing to play for. this system is no different but the majority of sides have something till the last couple of weeks of the season

You still have to play a rugby match on a rugby pitch regardless of whether it's home or away. The advantages that all Super League clubs have over all Championship clubs is massive and far outweighs home advantage in any given match.

The MPG will very rarely be as dramatic as yesterday and will more often than not simply see the best Championship side finish fifth in the Middle 8s, go away to the worst Super League side, and lose. This year was different because Leigh were so strong, but Leigh have been preparing for promotion on and off the pitch for a long time. They won't be replicated every year.

I was bemused by Lowes not being keen on the MPG last year because as I saw it, Bradford had nothing to lose, only something to gain. Wakefield were the team who had it all to lose. Yesterday they both had it to lose because the team that had it all to gain had already beaten both of them and disappeared into the sunset.

I still cringe at fans of my own club (thankfully just fans as I don't think anyone from within the club publicly whinged) who bemoan Leeds finishing fifth and winning SL in 2011 and 2012, and by absolutely no coincidence beating us in the semi and the final respectively en route. All we've heard since then is that the team finishing top should be Champions, the system isn't fair, it's all Sky's fault, Wembley is better than Old Trafford anyway, the Challenge Cup is the real prize in RL not the Sky Cup, etc. It's embarrassing. Every team knows the rules, every team knows the format, and every team knows what they have to do to achieve their aim. Hull KR failed. Cockayne and Peacock failed. Simple as that.

Don't see the issue with the new structure to be honest. If anything it gives poor clubs more opportunities to save their skin, and the MPG is no different to games at the end of the normal season during the traditional promotion and relegation system. Cas and Wakey, last game of the season in 2006, anyone? That was billed as the 'million pound match' at the time.

The season doesn't end after 23 rounds though. You may as well say it's a joke to not win the challenge cup after winning the semi final.

So the MPG doesn't take people's livelihoods into consideration but relegating 3 teams does? You do realise that in any P&R system, even without the MPG, and even without the Super 8s, there will be a game that seals the fate of the relegated team. That game, whether it be a regular fixture or a Super 8s game or something else will be capitalised on and marketed and will be crunch time for the club(s) involved. If it came down to 12th having to beat 1st in a regular league game in order to avoid relegation there'd still be some saying they didn't have a fair chance in such a one sided game.

great post

Leave the qualifiers alone they're working a treat.
What's needed is more work on the top 8s to make them more exciting at the beginning, question is how do you do that without playing about with the points each team starts with?

There is a massive difference in being the bottom club and getting relegated, compared to having an all or nothing game.
Emotions are sure to be running high and there is massive tension in the build up and all through the game, especially if it's close.
If it had been a blow out score, there wouldn't have been the same kind of scenes at the end.

The new structure has contrived this fixture and ramped up the pressure on all concerned, is it really necessary ?

If we must have this crazy structure then ,perhaps the top 4 of the Middle 8 should go straight into SL and the bottom 4 into The Championship.

There seemed to be inadequate stewarding in Hull yesterday and lessons need to be learne.

Not sure about playing with the points as it would lessen the original 23 rounds.

For me one thing has to be moving the Challenge Cup final to earlier in the season. We start the Top 8's and people are looking at two teams who have reached the final and looking at their form pre match and then particularly post Wembley and to have the Final right in the middle of the 7 extra games just feels like a bit of a comedown with regards to the games either side of it.

I think moving the cup final is a good idea and thinking a bit more about it, next season Leeds should be back at the top end so really we could have 6 or 7 clubs on similar points when the super 8s starts which is what we need to make the comp exciting for everyone who loves watching rl

That's just the way sport goes really. Not every MPG will be a golden point game, some will be a one sided SL win over a Championship side. In football I've seen teams have the title won with a few games to spare and I've seen Aguero score in the last minute to win a title. I've seen Leeds Rhinos win a GF with 20 mins to spare in 2007 and seen it go down the last tackle in 2015. Leeds won the LLS with Hall's try in the last second last year, in 2004 we won it with 3 games to spare. North Queensland in the NRL last year won in extra time after Thurston hit the post with the last kick of normal time, several years ago the GF was won by Manly in a 40-0 scoreline. Ryder Cup golf is on, been some big winning margins recently and also has the Miracle of Medinah in 2012 (will need similar today if Europe are going to win).

Some seasons the fight for the top 4 spots will be close, some times it won't. Only two years ago in 2014 with two rounds left the table looked like....

Saints - 38
Cas - 34
Wigan - 33
Wire - 33
Hudds - 33
Leeds - 32

People are being too quick to overreact and probably just showing their pre-determined thoughts on the system to be critical because the top 4 was settled early. That's just sport and you can't guarantee closeness every time.

No there isn't. Even in a standard league format you could still easily end up with a single game that decides the fate of two clubs - we've had them before and the last one wasn't all that long ago. Any such game would still be hyped up and would probably be dubbed 'the million pound game' by the media even without the 'formal' title.

Oh - and Rovers did finish bottom of the new League structure. They did so by virtue of losing yesterday's game. The season didn't end last week.

You mean like the Million Pound Match between Cas & Wakey in 2006?!?

I would keep the structure as it is, but then have the bottom club in SL relegated, the top club in the Championship promoted and a play off game between 11th in SL and 2nd in the Championship, then if the SL loses they can have no excuse for losing to a Championship team.