Spot on. The had a home game vs Leeds final week of the regular season to get up to 9th spot and on paper a better fixture list for the Middle 8's....they lost. The had home games vs Leigh and Hudds, just one win would've been enough....they lost both. They had home advantage vs Salford in the MPG.....they lost.

4 winnable home fixtures to save themselves and they failed every time. The system is being called harsh because players could lose jobs but it presented them with numerous do-able chances to avoid it.

Top 4 of middle 8s are in SL the following year bottom 4 aren't no need for million pound game.

It still doesn't resolve the disparity between the super 8's and middle 8's formats.

Best post yet. The MPG might provide great sporting moments but it's unnecessary and celebrates mediocrity. Well, not even mediocrity - Salford fans were, rightly, celebrating but celebrating what? Not promotion, not winning a trophy just being slightly less crap than some other teams. Scrap it.

All clubs know at the start of the season that they have 30 games to avoid the MPG and therefore, a potential relegation, every team in super league knew this, and won enough games to avoid it, One team didn't! not fair? but neither is life.
As others have said, it's sport, Hull KR knew the deal before a ball was kicked in february.

You see teams in football celebrate avoiding the drop on the final day all the time, it's actually provided some of their most talked about moments in fact.

Because it wouldn't be rewarding the likes of Hull who did so well to be top after 23 Rounds to just turn around and say you're now only 2 points ahead of Widnes and Wakey. Would be going backwards in rendering the opening 23 rounds meaningless and teams guaranteed a top 4 spot by Round 17/18 can just sit back for several rounds. Teams will start resting players thinking they'd rather have a fresh team and accept a mere 2 points to make up. It's up to those teams in 6th/7th/8th to make sure they aren't out of reach of the top 4 come 23 rounds, it's what Hull did differently from last year and they kept their foot down even when it was obvious they had a top 4 spot.

As for the middle 8's it's obvious why points can't carry over as you can't start with Leigh on 40 odd points and HKR on 14. The advantages given out are in the form of extra home games and facing your trickier opponents at home rather than away. Leeds and Hudds unexpected involvement in the Middle 8's mixed that up a bit this year but the format/reward for what fixtures you get in the 8's is fine.

It's not as bad as the 'Championship Shield' and seeing Bradford celebrating that yesterday. My word.

Well, my team continue to break records. Recently we've had....

First team to get nilled at Wembley by the largest margin.
First team to go undefeated in their respective Super 8s league (last year).
First SL club to be relegated via the Super 8s format.

I love my club but there are times.....

You Wigan, Saints etc supporters don't realise how easy you've got it supporting your clubs.

Anyway, onwards and back upwards. (hopefully)

We may not have voted for the current system but we knew what could happen. We were the worst team over the course of 27 games and deserve everything we got. The supporters knew after 6 or 7 games that we were in trouble and we needed to strengthen but we decided to stick with what we had to get us out of the mess. It didn't work and now we are relegated. Personally I can see another 10 years plus absence from SL as I don't believe any team is going to be as poor next year as some of the SL sides in the qualifiers this year.

On a side note, I can see a big dip in the SL crowds for next year unless Leigh can start averaging 7-8 per game to make up the drop from us being relegated. It also means I can cancel my Skysports subscription as we will only get maybe 1 game next year if we finish in the top 4 of the championship.

Rovers fan here. The MPG is awful. Relegation would be more acceptable if we'd finished bottom of the pile after 30 games. To finish 4th in the Middle 8s when there are 4 Super League places up for grabs and then have to play a one off game against a team who performed worse and finish below us in the format is quite hard to take.

You're right, it happens quite often but, it doesn't happen in a contrived fixture that the puts the 2 clubs (one of which gains promotion and another who faces relegation and possibly worse) directly against each other.

Occasionally, very occasionally, you end up with a "freak" fixture where this scenario happens by chance and there is just as much at stake (Wakefield v Cas in the "original" MPG) and thats fine, it happened and couldn't be avoided. However, the idiots running the game should have left it there.

Imagine if this game was Hull FC v Hull KR, Wigan vs Saints or Warrington v Widnes

Although this is very, very unlikely, the rivalry, with so much at stake, would lead to difficulties afterwards and by contriving the fixture, the RFL themselves would have to accept some responsibility.

The weekends game didn't matter because it was your club involved (and probably never will be) but, it doesn't take a genius to realise that this set of circumstances massively increases the risk of crowd trouble and yes, KR, as the host club, have to accept some responsibility for the poor stewarding but, the fixture isn't needed.

Two posts which are spot on. Hull KR had ample opportunity, including home advantage, to avoid relegation and they failed. Personally I do not like the MPG. I would have bottom 2 of SL play top 2 of Championship to decide promotion/relegation.

All of which is irrelevant. We we're in Super League since it's inception. We won it 4 times, were World Club Champions 3 times and won the CC twice in the SL era. We we're relegated, having finished 2nd from bottom. But that was fine, because we went to s**t on (and off) the field when it mattered.

You had the whole season to avoid being the middle 8, you blew it. You had the middle 8 games to avoid being in the MPG, you blew it. You has 2 minutes to hold onto an 8 point lead on Saturday, you blew it. The fact is like us, you couldn't get the job done when the chips were down. As much as I wanted you to be the team to stay up, welcome to P&R. Welcome to sport.

Yeah sick of hearing the superleagIlluminati whinging because the system - designed to be nothing more than an exercise to keep championship clubs quiet - has actually worked.

They'll just have to cut their cloth accordingly.

An interesting article in LE this morning from Tigers coach Powell.

Basically - leave the structure as it is and introduce a second MPG for the top 8.(i.e. 4th Vs 5th). After 23 rounds this season only Wildcats couldn't realistically get up to 4th with the remaining 7 games left. Widnes, Tigers and Dragons would be fighting for the top 4 and Wigan, Saints, Wire and Hull FC would be fighting to avoid 4th spot and the extra game.

Not the worst idea, but problem is the format could get even more confusing to casual fans of the game. Personally id prefer to see a 'Super 6' format, with the remaining 6 clubs taking on the top 2 Championship teams. Teams in 7th and 8th arent ever realistically in the running for Old Trafford, nor are the 3rd and 4th Championship teams going to offer much against Full time teams.

I wouldn't worry about that - I don't think there are any.

We got trouble in Hull vs HKR matches in the regular season, should we have not had them for fear of crowd trouble? Likewise any Derby? Get rid of Grand Finals and Challenge Cups (Widnes fans kicking off the other year in the semi final) because one set of fans will be massively upset? Crowd trouble at the football Euros in the summer, get rid of them and the World Cup?

And we do need fixtures like this.....yes it's gimmicky but that's where we are as a sport in this country down e pecking order and it's pointless trying to deny it and think we can get headlines without such events as this and the Magic Weekend and Grand Final/Playoffs.

Cas had sympathy from fans of other clubs in 2006 because we all knew it should have been Wigan going down rather than them...

Last year many were complaining that the system was contrived to give false hope to Championship clubs. That actually there was no chance of anyone ever getting promoted.

Well this year proved it could be done and surprise surprise some want it to be changed again.

No one kicked off at the Million pound game last year?
Are we seriously saying that it's impossible for 2 SL clubs to battle for relegation without the kicking off?

Does not show a huge amount of faith in SL supporters that they cannot behave themselves when the pressure is on. Unlike Championship clubs can.

Chief, I know plenty about sport.

We did blow it. Twice, in a week, by a point.

My point was that we weren't actually the worst team over the season, but we are within this system.

We deserve to go down as we've finished last in the format we signed up to, what I'm saying is that the format is incorrect.

Watching your team is often not fun, but being involved in these games, as you know, is less than fun before a ball is kicked.

Jeez, you've soon changed your tune, it's not two minutes since your club was a shining light of the illuminati.

I think you've forgotten how you scoffed at clubs from lower divisions whilst riding high winning endless trophies, yet now you're a standard-bearer for the Championship.

Is the new system perfect - no. Is it exciting for the neutral - oh yes. Can a Championship get promoted (without a S.L. club going bust in the process) - hell yeah.

Superleague play Four Championship sides and Three Superleague sides.
Championship play Four Superleague sides and Three Championship sides.

And the structure needs changing..What planet are some of you on.

One were SL is still a closed shop it seems.