Fill your boots

1 v 2 with the winner going to the final.

Losing team guranteed home advantage in the final eliminator of which only 1 game would take place.

3 v 6
4 v 5


Winners to play eachother at the home of the highest place side. Winner of that game going away to the loser of the game between the top 2. Has to be a reward for finishing top 2.

Agreed - revert back to this system.
The top finishing teams should be better rewarded.

In theory, we could win all 27 league games next year, batter Hudderfield again in the first week of the play-offs and then get knocked out a fortnight later.

At least with the above format you'd have to have two bad weeks before being eliminated.

Twelve team league.

Everyone plays eachother home and away (twenty-two games).

The league is then effectively seperated into two six team leagues - top six and bottom six.

Top six keep their points from first part of the season and then play eachother home and away (ten more games) to determine 1st place to 6th place finishes.

Bottom six do the same to determine 7th to 12th.

This system would reward consistency AND give Sky the big finish to the season where there would be crucial games between the top teams every week

I wouldn't change it.

Just make the league winners - Champions

Have the old style premiership play-offs after the league has finished.

this i have been saying it since superleague started have league winners as superleague champions then playoffs as super league premiers

The top 8 system has to go, you can't reward teams that far down the league.

The NFL has a 12 team playoff format however they have 32 teams, and they don't play each other home and away. So it's laughable to have a top 8 in a 14 team league. Go back to a top 6 and reward the teams who finish higher up, I have no problem with a team in 5th winning however 1 of the top 2 should at least be in the grand final to reward consistency.

Finish in the bottom half and could be called the Champions? Stupid.

Top 6 like previous is fairer IMO.

The biggest priority for me is remove the clubcall, I don't think there are really any supporters of it outside the RFL.

That old top 6 system mentioned above was the best system we have had.

If its a top 8 then I prefer the NRL McIntyre system to our one, but in both systems the first couple of weeks of the playoffs eliminates the field from 8 to 4 and you are left with a straight cup semi final situation. So the anomaly about the 'reward' for the top teams in the league that they are given a second bite of the cherry is that they are allowed to lose their first playoff and can then fight their way back into it, but if they win their first playoff and lose that second one then they don't get a second bite of the cherry.

In SL the only time this has happened to a team is us this year. The other league winners that didn't make the Grand Final were St Helens but they lost both playoffs in 2005, I think it's fair enough under a playoff system if you lose two playoffs that you aren't given a third bite of the cherry...

In the NRL they brought the McIntyre top 8 system in in 1999. Since then there have been three teams that topped the league and lost one playoff at the wrong time - Cronulla in 1999, Parramatta in 2005 and Melbourne this year. It must have been worst for Cronulla in 99 as they have never won an Aussie title and that was their best chance in years. The other league winners that didn't make the GF were St George-Illawarra in 2009 but they did the same as Saints in 2005, they lost two playoffs in a row.

It's easier to make a better playoff system if you have fewer teams. I would prefer to go to back to a 12 team league with 6 in the playoffs under the former top 6 system described above, or ideally to a 10 team league with 5 in the playoffs going back to the old system used in 1998-2001 which was

Week 1:
1st gets a week off
Game A 4th v 5th (winner to game C, loser out)
Game B 2nd v 3rd (winner to game D, loser to game C)

Week 2:
Game C Winner of game A v loser of game B (winner to game E, loser out)
Game D 1st v winner of game B (winner to GF, loser to game E)

Week 3: Winner of game C v loser of game D (winner to GF, loser out)

Week 4: Winner of game D v winner of game E

whilst that might look complicated it basically has 2 characteristics -
- the league winner gets a much easier playoff system than anybody else (BUT it potentially faces two weeks off, in week 1 and week 3 which some people said was a disadvantage)
- 1st, 2nd or 3rd get a second bite of the cherry, for 4th and 5th it is a case of playing eliminators every week

do away with post seasons playoffs

at end of season top team is crowned league champions then play the 1/4s 1/2s and final of challenge cup as an end of season knock out tournament that will contain the best few teams plus some randoms

expand exiles to 3 games to fill void left by cc in mid season

might risk making the league a bit boring outside of the teams challenging for title

My choice too.

If we are going to go for the most fair system then get rid of the play-offs.

If we want the most fair version of the play-offs then 1st goes straight to the final with 2v3 in midweek to decide who joins them.

If we want the play-offs for sky, great games, along with being a pretty fair system and a system that was tried and tested and didn't let us down... 5 team play-offs. If anyone gives me the argument about the rest of the league being out of the comp with ten games to go .... WELL TOUGH.... lets make it harder for them to get in the play-offs, then they will have to improve. I would also take a top 6 system but the top 5 is the best IMO and would currently throw up an awesome race for the finals along with some seriously good games.

A top 5 this year would have been...

Wigan v Saints
Hudds v Leeds

Wire v Wigan/Saints
Saints/Wigan v Leeds/Hudds

Much better games than Hull FC and KR threw up...

Much fairer system with one of the top two making the final and also the team finishing fifth would have to beat every other team away from home to win the grand final....

Could Leeds have won this year if in the first week they had to go away to Hudds, then away to Saints and then away to Wigan and then beat Warrington in the final? I don't think so...

Top 7 (i.e. Top half of the league)

1st gets week 1 off (Bonus for winning the league)

2v7
3v6
4v5

Week 2:

1st vs Lowest Place Winner
Highest Ranked Winner vs Remaining side

Every game is a knockout, no second chance. No club call. And a definitive benefit to finishing first.


Most of all though, I'd have the challenge cup final a month earlier in July, to give more distance between the final and the playoffs.

Quite a few different suggestions on here, I'd go back to the Top 6. Are we all agreed that Clubcall should go?

Spot on with that mate.

Same here. It's a matter of changing the emphasis onto the importance of the league season. Sky changed the emphasis, it's time to change it back.

I agree with odem regarding league champions (yes CHAMPIONS) not league leaders. if it is a continuation of the league then team finishing 1st should go straight into the final as reward for finishing top. at the moment there is very little recognition for CHAMPIONS apart from home draws(wow!!!),and a hubcap*.If it is a different comp from league then leave it the same as it is and call winners GF winners GF champions not overall champions. See simples!!!!!

Id have it just the top 4

1st place - Straight to Old Trafford
2nd place - Straight to final eliminator

3rd would then play 4th (3rd gets home advantage)

2nd place team v winner of 3rd/4th match (2nd place team gets home advantage)

Or.....maybe your team could learn how a Super League title is won, no matter what position you finish. Leeds have won from 1st, 2nd and 5th. That's bona fide Champion quality, no two ways about it.

Do you honestly think if Spain had a 100% qualifying record for Euro 2012 and then won every match but lost the final, we would be suggesting they are the real winners? No chance.

I'm not going to be a pedant (as you appear to be brain dead)

But a wire fan can claim they are league chapions, league winners, league detroyers or whatever they want.

Wire on the league. Leeds won the playoffs. (Notice how the playoffs wren't in a leagu format; they were in a playoff format)

Your euro anolgy doesn't work because it isn't in a single league format. The playoffs are ultimately unnecassary and purely for money.

So the team finishing 1st gets the 'advantage' of going 21 days without a match, and going into the final without any match practice?

Well they could, but it would be slightly stupid considering the history books will declare Leeds as League Champions.

I would hazard this conversation wouldn't even be taking place if Warrington hadn't got so close and felt like they needed an extra helping hand to get them over the finishing line. Any team that thinks finishing top is enough, knowing perfectly well that is just the first part of the season, maybe needs to look closer to home rather than at the format.

Tony, a serious question.....As a paying spectator ( I presume?) ,does a good final 6 weeks of rugby make up for watching months of the dross you were served up earlier in the season?

I know you take the rough with the smooth as a spectator, but you'd surely have prefered to watch Wire this year, as a rugby fan, than the rubbish you lot were jeering most of the year?

Good job we finished in the top 6 then



Strange this debate doesnt happen at the beginning of the season but at the end after the top 2 teams have been knocked out and a team from 5th has won the Grand Final

.

This is not a sour grapes thing like you think and we're not the only ones who think this. I've got exclusively footy supporting mates who think you being champions is a joke. I've actually been quite complimentary about your win so I don't know why you can't take on board some different opinions.

The current play-off system is plain wrong, although I think the play-offs (in some form, probably top five) are right to have.