I mean, who gets crowned (premier league)champions.



It already happens in Europe. I'm talking about the Premier League...it will happen. Rupert wants an end of season showdown, and he'll get it it.

Was Rupert Murdoch running the game in the 1950s because when Warrington won those titles when Brian Bevan was here, they were done under a playoff system.



How many of those games back then meant anything, you could come 8th and get into the playoffs and it was a straight knock out. No wonder Bevan scored so many tries the games must have been meaningless till the end of the season?



It was all about greed and wanting to make money out of the sport. That's what happens when you decide to break away and try and take a beautiful sport like rugby away from its amateur roots and introduce gimmicks purely to make money.

Sure he will.



He'll have to accept though that for any team in the semis or final of the Champions League, they will happily sacrifice "Premiership playoffs" as the Champions League is what really matters at the end of the season.



It would bring some great excitement into the league though because with the likes of United and Chelsea potentially occupied with other things it might open the door for the likes of Arsenal and Liverpool to challenge for the Grand Final.

AND I'D STILL SAY THE SAME THING.



Obviously, you're on another "famous" Sally "wind-up"



Play-off wins (to me) are watered-down.

Bevan played in a league of nearly 30 teams, so it would have been implausable for teams to play each other, home and away. So, a play off system (under those circumstances) is the best you are going to get..



Yes, leagues (nowadays) are set up to be ever so slightly unfair, so that a play off system can be brought in, to justify themselves.



RL has it, because of the extra game at the Magic weekend, hence, an unstable league, so we have to have a play-off system

RU has it, because their teams play on the same weekends as Internationals, when leading team's players have been involved, and have not been able to play for their own club's matches that weekend, so, that justifies their play-off system.



We (as a sport) need to decide what we want. A week-end jamboree, where we all play together (and upsets, ever so slightly, the league format, thus ensuring a play-off system), or a league, which honours it's best team, over a home and away system).



The play-offs (rightly or wrongly) are here to stay. We need to manage them better, though

yes because it cost me £7.50.

Yep, I remember your own fans in 2006 standing there in silence on the West Terrace to express their disgust at having 'stolen' the game from us in the play-offs and progressing despite finishing a good 12 points behind us in the regular season. No one celebrated at all such was the empathy with us at the hooter!



The following season we showed our displeasure at the unfair play-off set up by resting players in all our 8 defeats (and 1 draw) to ensure we only finish 2nd before winning it for the next 3 years. That showed 'em!

We got beat - hammered - last night because we were awful, the play-offs are hardly a factor. There was a lazy petulance about us that needs to be addressed, like Bridge thinking we could score from 5 yards from our own line.

When we get to the last few games of the season i can see us upping the intensity and they will be games worth watching. If coming top was of importance and we needed to win that game last night, Carvell, atkins, hodgson and Briers would have been playing. When we played Leeds early in the season on sky, Jamie peacock in the build up stated that they weren't to bothered if they won or lost. I'm sorry but a clash between two top sides should be a massive game and it wasn't. Fans are paying to watch teams go through the motions in a great number of games. That simply wouldn't be happening in a straight league system.

game against the eighth placed side, a warm-up game almost. Finishing fifth is better than finishing fourth!

I think you are right, perhaps we should aim for 5th. .... Leeds seem to have this all sussed don't they ?

The only way to make the league more competitive and create more evenly matched weekly rounds is to reduce the number of clubs in the competition. There is not enough good players available to make 14 team league work

I think if it was really important to win that game then Monas jr, Carvell, Briers, Atkins, Hodgeson and probably Grix and Westwood would all have played and yes, we would have won that game.



We lost because we 'rested' too many key players. We got thrashed because several good players had dreadful games, plus 3 players were returning from months out. It is a result that you get at the extreme end of playing a squad rotation system. More typical would be a 24-20 win or a narrow loss.



It was a depressing game to watch, in fact it was humiliating. But the fact remains that the play-offs do not reward teams that win most of their regular games, it penalises them because they have to use their best players week in week out. At the end of the season you arrive with a team that has lost its edge (or has injuries to key players). Rotation does not guarantee success but it weighs the odds in your favour. Wigan are using the same tactics.