Don't act daft - Obviously it's no disgrace if a team doesn't win every game ... but it's ridiculous that teams go into league games with no intention of trying to win them.... and that is what is happening.

To accommodate an 'end of season finale' consisting of 9 games, two of which the loser gets a second chance at, the RFL/Sky/ Cameron (as he seems to get the blame for everything even if he wasn't PM when it started) have made a nonsense of probably 50+ league games, for many of which the tickets have been pre-sold by way of season tickets. I pay to watch a competitive game of rugby, not 13 a side WWF!

So instead of giving the club all the money upfront, I'll keep it in my pocket and, when I feel like giving a toss, I'll put effort into paying to watch! I'm not happy with whats happening, and that's my choice .... and if you choose otherwise, that's your choice.

I believe I only saw one game that a team went into without a complete intention to win - Warrington away to London the week before the CC final. Changes to the process to decide the season champions wouldn't have affected what they did in that game.

You are missing something here.
If you buy a season ticket at somewhere around £200 and go to every game you would save about £60 a season, but as fans, we are now treated to a play off and Grand final.
This system does allow the shrewd coaches the opportunity to rest key players or, not force someone to play with an injury and it still gives us a "champion" team.
Ok, it's not what many of us grew up with and Leeds winning from 5th does make folk ask questions but, in fairness, they beat all of the top teams (apart from Saints) along the way.
So they were certainly the best team when it mattered and believe me, I am a long, long way from being a Rhino's fan.

Leeds also, unlike Wire and Wigan, did not particularly take to resting players during the course of the season. They might have liked to mind you - but couldn't afford to.

It all depends on the future.

If, over the next 5 or 6 years normal service is resumed and the champions are from the top 2 again, this whole thing about the playoffs and regular seasons will die down, and in 10 or 15 years the current leeds team will be immortalised for winning back to back titles from 5th.

They ought to just increase the financial reward for the League toppers. Make it worth winning as a stand alone thing and completely seperate from the play off income.

Ok which games did a team go into with no intention of winning?
Which 50+ league games were rendered meaningless by having a playoff system?
Why hasn't a playoff system rendered the NRL regular season meaningless?
I'm struggling to work out what your problem is. Is it with the current playoff system? Or any kind of playoff system? Because if it's just this playoff system then that nullifies your main argument about a team winning from lower in the league.

It's a very tricky thing to judge. Take the Wigan - Catalans playoff game. I'm sure Catalans 'intended' to win, but realistically, it must have been in their minds that their more likely shot was going to come a week later at home. We'll never know for sure if it affected their performance, but I think sports should generally aim to structure things to maximize the relevance of every game.

How you achieve that is massively dependent on the actual sport, the depth of teams, international opportunities, etc. The Premier League for example, whether by design or luck, has got a competition that (despite the big gap between the top clubs and bottom clubs) works well in terms of keeping the interest level high, due to the relegation, Champions League, and Europa league (to a lesser extent) spots. It's usually quite near the end of the season before any clubs (and then only a very small number) have literally nothing to play for.

Oh for a 'champions league'...problem solved!

That's a good point. In the Premiership you get more money for finishing higher up the table. I don't believe that's the case for Super League. That said, do we have enough money to spread around to incentivise this? It's okay saying pay them more but if we end up taking £100k off the prize money for winning the GF then that's robbing Peter to pay Paul and not going to help us.

Some people are missing the point here. There is no doubt Leeds are the champions, nobody is saying they shouldn't. People are questioning whether going to regular season games are worth it. Leeds may have tried their best all season, but I bet they didn't have 'that edge' that top sportmen need to win some games cos no matter how many games they lost, be it 0 or 12 in the regular season, they still will only be four games from winning the championship come September.
The games between 'the big 4' this year in the regular season didn't produce one good game. It could be because it doesn't matter if th y win or lose 'as only the playoffs matter'

e.g if Wigan play Leeds 4 games into the season, then both teams should be busting a gut to win, because if they do not, that could be the 2 points that costs them the league come the end of the season. But, at the moment, it doesn't really matter if they win or not 'as long as they win in the playoffs'

get it????

Aha, now i get it. I'm not going to bother next season now.

you're not the only one

How is the difference in quality irrelevant? The more evenly matched the teams are, the less difference there will be between 1st and 5th, obviously. In a more evenly matched league, like the NRL, you would expect the win ratios of the top teams to be lower in comparison to SL.

Just make it top 4 playoffs. Problem solved.

No matter how much these Pie Eaters complain, the problem isn't Leeds or having a play off system. The "problem" is that substandard, bottle-less teams can get to the top of the league but fail in the play offs. Wiganers feel this is a fault of the play offs themselves. I believe it is a fault of the teams who can go so far but do not have the true qualities that champions need to display. When the chips were down, when they encountered a tiny bit of adversity, they failed to win in the biggest games of the season. By definition, they were unworthy of being champions.

Not to be an arrse or anything, but 80 minutes with two evenly match sides - it can go either way. The referee is hugely influential in a RL match, and momentum is not something that can self-accounted for half the time. You either get it or you don't. Leeds only beat Wigan by 1pt via late penalty and were outscored by 2 tries to 1. Who knows it all might have been a different story if Ryan Hall had been penalised for holding down in the 79th minute.



Whether the system is right or wrong. You can't always justify it by saying the "champion teams always find a way to win. no matter what" - especially in a condensed space of time, with variables occurring outside of either team's hands.

Might also have been different if the three ball steals Silverwood awarded as knock ons had been correct, given they took Wigan from defending their own line to scoring a try.

A pure league format means the most important games are the ones where you beat sides you should beat. Leeds lost some of these-away at Huddersfield, Wakefield, Hull FC & Bradford. The current system means the champions are decided by their ability to beat the best teams, not the weakest.

As you'll see in the Premiership, titles are decided not by the winners of the big games, but by which team 'slips up' against weaker opposition.

Spot on. It comes down to their ability to dispatch teams they should be dispatching, and then [inot lose[/i against their rivals.

Well whoopdy f*ckin do. I never really understood the (almost relentless now) opinion that ''da best team should be da team that finishes top''.

Why is being able to dispatch wakefield, huddersifled, salford, london widnes with consistency any better a measure of champions than being able to beat your closest rivals, with it all on the line?

I'm pro-playoffs. I think champions should be able to do both - consistently beat the rest [uand[/u succeed at sudden death matches. imo, the current system places too much emphasis on the latter.

This would, sort of, make sense if Leeds only lost to those weaker teams, but they don't. They have taken 3 from 24 points against Saints, Warrington and Wigan in the 12 regular season games over 2011 and 2012.

Of course, those games weren't on the line. But the issue and the question being asked is; why should people turn up to watch to watch those games, where even you imply that's there no real incentive for either team to 'dispatch' the other?

How you are so committed to such an obviously nonsensical, circular, logical fallacy of an argument I dont know.

Yes you can, Had Ryan Hall given away a penalty, we may have lost, we may have been disappointed and felt a little hard done by, but there was an entire game we could have won there. The fact Wigan got the rub of the green wouldnt mean we were guaranteed to lose, as we proved, you can win in spite of referees decisions.

On any given day one team can beat another. Wigan Athletic beat Manchester United towards the end of last season and more or less cost United the title. I suppose United 'bottled it' and Wigan Athletic are big game players???????

Do you think Wigan Athletic should have been Champions last season??

Its a pretty poor post that mate, 'Clutching at straws' others may say

That is quite the leap of logic.

If the pressure so got to Man Utd that they lost to Wigan Athletic in the biggest game of the season then, yes, they would not be showing the required champion qualities (Wigan Athletic would likely not be in the position to be in the biggest game so your analogy falls down of course).

It's not hard to understand but you Pie Munchers appear to be particularly cut up about it this year for some reason. In an adversarial sport like Rugby League it makes complete sense for the champions to be decided in a match up on the biggest, most tense, most intense, day of the season. Applying a football mindset to a completely different sport is where I fear you are going wrong.