My thoughts:

1. Who ever finishes first should go straight to the Grand Final. Bring a bit of prestige back to coming top of the league, and prevent the likes of Warrington not giving a damn about coming 1st or 2nd in the league (performance/team v London). Also increase the prize money for coming top to give chairmen the incentive to push for 1st. No-one seems to care much so long as they are either 1-4 or 5-8 under the current system, and the lack of prestige over winning the league is ridiculous...

2. The team that comes second is the only team to get a second chance

3. The argument that having 8 teams in the playoffs gives the lower teams something to fight for toward the end of the season doesn't work for me... At present the top 4 or 5 teams have nothing much to fight for toward the end of the season. Therefore reduce down to the top 5 or 6... It was kind of embarrasing for the sport that we won last year, being the best team over the last few weeks, rather than the season - imagine if we'd come 8th in the league and won...

4. Whilst I "get" the need for licences and no relegation, make finishing bottom of the league count against future licence applications - perhaps the only teams that can be considered for ejection from Superleague are those who have finished bottom in the last 3 years - that would really re-introduce the dog fight to avoid finishing bottom at the end of the year...

5. This leaves the bottom 3 clubs fighting to avoid finishing bottom, and the top 6 or 7 battling to come in the top 5 or 6. There's only around 4 teams in positions 11 to 8 with not much to play for toward the end of the season then - but in reality there's at least that many not having meaningful games anyway...

6. Do we consider "bonus" points in the league for nilling opponents, scoring "X" number of tries etc? This would mean games that seem over by half time (ie when one team is 30-0 up) still have a meaning in the second half?

7. Give some lesser incentive to teams that do finish in top 8 but don't make the playoffs. Perhaps enter the Challenge Cup a round later the following season (with increased prize money to offset lost revenue).

I don't feel that's quite enough to the higher placed teams, hence my prior suggestion of a top 6 format. There's a balance to be had here: give an advantage to higher placed teams, a chance to all qualifiers, and a format that provides enough fixtures to bring enough revenue into the sport.

How about Keeping it to the top eight but making the games in favour of the higher placed team so

1v8
2v7
3v6
4v5

BUT having like a Magic weekend format so fans can turn up and watch all 4 games in a large venue. I guess that it would get 40+ thousand and potential make more revenue for all the clubs involved rather than have just 8,000 turn up and watch Wigan - Catalan.

Possible or just a crazy idea, advantage of playing a weaker team but at a neutral venue... then the next round is the semi finals at respective home grounds....final at Old Trafford

People will just have to realise that a playoff system that has the potential of teams playing up to 4 times will struggle with attendence the earlier games, take for example Hull's potential route this year,
- home fixture against Hudds (price of ticket)
- away to Wire (price of ticket, plus long drive over the M62)
- away to Wigan or Saints (price of ticket, plus long drive over the M62)
- GF at Old Trafford (price of ticket, plus another long drive over the M62)

To do that 4 weeks in a row is a big financial ask and people will more than likely hold back to the semi finals and final, so you can't really look at playoffs attendence as a weekly thing but as 4 week collective thing. People are simply saving themselves for the last 2 matches because financially 4 games in 4 weeks (around £100 in tickets alone depending on how expensive a GF seat you get, plus more if you're paying for children too) will be too much and you would usually expect 2 sets of fans of top 8 teams to have just forked out for Wembley a few weeks before.

You've hit the nail squarely on the head.

Agreed