If a team finishing 8th manages to make it all the way to the GF and leave victorious then in my mind they bloody well deserve to be champions.

As an aside, which match has more potential in terms of intensity;

Match A – Team X v Team Y, 8th and 9th respectively, are battling it out for the last play off place.

Match B – Team X v Team Y, 8th and 9th respectively, are playing in a match which decides who finishes 8th.

But that'd be the case if 6th played 7th etc.

I thought it was too many when half of the league qualified for the play-offs; now you can have a mediocre season, finish in the bottom half of the table and still qualifies. It cheapens the whole concept of it being considered an achievement to qualify for them.

They should have in theory stuck with the top 6, however, that would mean teams giving up and having nothing too play for earlier.

The more teams in the play offs the better i'm just not a fan of this you get too choose your oppo rubbish.

Indeed. It's even worse when you the consider possibilty of being crowned Super League Champions even though you finished in the bottom half of the league!

in theory, as the league gets closer and closer there will be less of a gap between 1st and 8th so in the future finishing 8th might not be such a bad position.

The rights and wrongs of the number of playoff places available is very much a matter of opinion, but the comparison was between a league with a playoff structure succeeding it and one without.

I feel the intensity of a match is not diminished by the presence of the play offs. Without relegation, a play off position is the only thing more then professional pride which should install a bit of drive in the players to compete to the best if their ability.

Take the play off out of the equation then your left with one or two teams with something to play for and perhaps yes, the games involving those will no doubt be very hard, but the rest of the league will subconsciously take their foot off the gas and play out the campaign with one eye on the following season.

It needs looking at but I can't think of how really. leeds have been at sea most of this year because the league fixtures dont matter. 1st spot with a guaranteed GF spot would certainly add to the intensity however.

But the more teams you allow in, the less the regular season games mean. You can have an absolutely horrible season and still get in. It doesn't reward effort like it should.

My initial post and title probably shouldn't have been about scrapping the playoffs but more about changing the format as its terrible in its current form.

Super League needs fewer games that mean more. How this happens is up for debate but something has to be done. The sport developed with the Sky money but has now stagnated and we've been firmly overtaken by club rugby Union. How long do we trudge on like this before they do something about it?

SL this season is just so utterly dull and lifeless. Is this just me that thinks this? IMO the reason is that there are so many playoff places. All the decent sides know they need nothing more than an average season to be, there is no incentive to go all out every week and attain a high placing, it's all about gearing yourself to do as little as possible so you are fresh for the playoffs.

the top 5 system really meant that each place higher in the table gave a definate advantage to the team involved.

The current system doesnt really do that - at least the 2008 system didnt, where there was no big advantage between 1st and 2nd. They need to devise something that involves 7 teams and gives proper benefits to every team higher up the league.

But.. but it's competetive????

Once home, once away and top five play off. That is ample for Super League.

Bring in a pre-season knockout cup competition to get rid of those meaningless friendlies, and bring in a couple of "international windows" to complement the existing international fixtures, and we once again have an exciting, meaningful series of competitions.

Is it? Or is that because a lot of the sides, like Leeds as an example are just 'clocking off' because they know October is the month and nothing else matters?

The latter stages of the Challenge Cup have provided some of the best entertainment and hardest fought games seen this year.

Exactly. Teams recognise the Cup is a knock out competition and give their all in it, which makes for good viewing as the sense of desperation to win is there.

Except for the fact that having an average league position of at least 8th is an extra point for their franchise bid.

The problem with the challenge cup being at the back end of the season is that in winning it reduces your chances of winning the grand final.

Also I'm waiting for the day when an 8th place team losing 12 league games beats 1st place who loses say 3 league games. Which means consistency in 4 play off games is far superior than consistency in 27 league games.

Top 5 was OK, top 6 was stretching it, top 8 is ludicrous

Get rid of the play-offs? Definite no.

Grand Final brings in huge amounts of money and is probably the biggest date on the RL calendar this side of the world now. It would be ludicrous to want to get rid of that. (Same for those who want to scrap the Challenge Cup).

Also, you argue that the season is stale and boring because everyone is waiting to peak in time for the play-offs, I don't understand this argument. St Helens are 5 points clear at the top. What do the rest play for? Nothing? There's no relegation, and no other competitions to qualify (unlike the Premiership where there are Champions League places to play for, then Europa League places, and also relegation to avoid). There is nothing for most of the league to play for at this point of the year if you remove the play-offs.

Superleague is so boring and diluted, nothing really happens if you finish at the bottom, not much happens if you finish top. Half the league games are meaningless because half the league has more than a 50/50 chance of finishing in the top 8.

If you had a top 3 play off then every superleague game will have a purpose and intensity, the quality of matches would improve, games would be less boring. Superleague is basically for teams who operate between 4th and 10th positions, it gives mediocrity a chance of success.

you played much pro rugby?
can't speak for other teams fans, but my team aleays give 100% and win or lose, I will always appreciate their efforts. Just because it's not a grand final doesn't make it not exciting you know....it's the game that matters most, not the result

Its quality that matters, and we aint getting it in superleague. The only game I,v seen for quality and intensity this season is Leeds v St Helens. For me the game has gone backwards and does not match the 2006 and 2007 seasons.

The officials don,t help by slowing the game down which gives the advantage to the weaker team. If we don,t ecourage fast open skilful rugby then we are in for another pasting in the internationals.

When they made the decision to expand the playoffs to 8 they should have some up with a system that gives a bigger regard to the top 4 than what we will have. On another forum someone came up with what I thought was an excellent system which guaranteed that all of the top 4 got two bites of the cherry. It was a five week system but it is a lot better than the one we have got.

I thought the fiction that 'speed' equalled 'quality' was shown as the farce it is by the world cup last year? More entertaining? Possibly. Better standard? No way. I suspect that Leeds' form is partly due to the fact they are cruising a bit, but it also may have something to do with the fact that they have simply struggled more to adapt to the changing rules.

I possibly agree with reducing the number of teams in the play-offs, but the play-offs themselves will generally be far more intense than average league games.

At the lower end, far better not to have relegation than a couple of 'do or die' games for a few teams at the end of the year and the consequent financial disaster of falling out of SL.

You only have to look at the players of yesteryear compared to the players of now to see that a faster game has not done anything to improve the standard of the game.

The top 4 do get a second bite of the cherry if they are beaten in the first round. They also get the opportunity to win a bye. I think it's a lot fairer than the top 6 system.