Attendances are up, a topsy turvy season impossible to predict with a totally fresh CC final and a potential new champion. Has this been the best ever?

And then there’s IMG. While you were sitting at home, waiting around doing NISH, they’ve been out, making moves, cutting deals, strategising.

With either London or Toulouse joining Super League next year after another Featherstone bottle job, things are looking up at least.

No way, its become more competitive because the standards have dropped and the sport is pretty skint. Teams of 10 or 20 years ago would wipe the floor with the current lot.

Just looking that 11 of the 12 current SL teams have contested a major final since 2017. Isn't this a good thing?

Yes doing better on that front, and we will have a newish name on the SL trophy as Wigan havent won it for 5 years and Catalan of course would be new

The best super league season is one where, in the wider context, it sits as the pinnacle of a healthy sport. Right now, eulogising about SL is akin to saying the house is burning down but has anyone noticed the attic has a nice new velux window. Or the apple is soft and rotten but take a look at that stalk.

Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah HUMBUG

I think we're on the cusp of a very worrying period for rugby league. The finances at most clubs are a massive concern, even the smug 'big' clubs are unsustainable as businesses in their current format and rely entirely on the input of a wealthy owner. I think we're about to start losing teams quite regularly from the lower leagues as the central funding drops and costs keep increasing. Salford worry me a lot as well, as do both of the clubs who could potentially come up. Neither have anything like a squad capable of being competitive in Super League and do either of them have the money to sign players of sufficient quality in such a short period of time?

The quality of the product on the field is at it's lowest point ever as well. The semi finals were so, so bad as entertainment spectacles. Tomkins knocking Saints out will have brought great joy to most RL fans in this country, but the game itself was turgid, anyone watching as a casual sports fan or a potential fan of Rugby League would have been turned away. There was no attempt to score points or attack, just Catalans desperately searching for penalties all game and Saints lacking any attacking quality at all. When they are two of the best three teams in the competition it's very worrying. In a way I hope Wigan win the title by scoring a few tries and it encourages more sides to play the game a bit more rather than obsessing over diving and cheating their way to six agains and penalties like most of them do.

Then you look at the Young Player of the Year award nominee list. It's gone from Jack Welsby, Harry Smith, Morgan Gannon to Jack Welsby, Mikey Lewis, Jarrad O'Connor to Thewlis, O'Neill and Nicholson. The winner of the award is a winger from a mid table side that had a terrible season for their level of ambition who has 8 tries in 21 games, no assists, misses 25%+ of his tackles and makes errors on more than 10% of his carries. He's a player with decent potential, but if he's the best young player this season, it's a worrying sign as well. I'm sure he'd admit himself he's got way more to give than he's shown this season.

I need to sit down, there’s almost a complement to Wigan in there. I’d agree with some points but disagree with others.

If there were any casual RU supporters watching they probably would have enjoyed the Catalan v St Helens semi. A lot of kicks at goal and 2 sides largely devoid of attacking enterprise. It was, never the less brutal, 100% commitment and exciting (or at least I thought it was).

I think recent rule changes intended to speed the game up have slowed it down. I like the 6 again but 1st or 2nd tackle should be a penalty. Lees was the prime example, he just lay there waiting for the defence to get set and the ref to call 6 again.

I’m cautiously optimistic about the next few years and hope IMG can flex some muscle to propel the sport to where it needs to be. If that fails I’ll begin to worry.

Always full of praise for Wigan outside of the usual rivalry banter. A proper RL club and now Peet is the coach and has brought a massive amount of class with him, there's not much to dislike now.

It’s funny, I’ve been rabbiting on about the quality of super league for years, and how saints were basically winning it almost by default on account of being the only top club who wasn’t a total basket case (just look, look at the absolute state of some of the Leeds and Wigan teams over the past 5 years). Suddenly, now saints are no longer top dogs it’s well, look at the state of super league. I get it. When Leeds were top dogs the competition was stronger than ever in my eyes.

Agree, the game wont surive with 4 or 5 clubs with wealthy backers playing each other in repeated loop games. Scottish football is also on a long decline largely due to repetitve fixtures.

I didnt mind the Catalan-Saints game too much as I like an arm wrestle game but agree it wasnt a patch on the quality of years past. SKYs coverage was their weakest for a while, the cameraman looked like he'd been on the french vino, interviews cut off sharpky etc. I know its not easy to do a broadcast from France at a weeks notice but theyd have pulled it off better if it was football.

Struggling to think of a more monotonous GF than this year.
Definition of 5 drives and a kick

Nothing changes. Everything stays the same.

Status Quo

Absolutely dreadful. A family member said "ooh I bet that was gripping" when I sent them the score. About as gripping as olive oil on a waterslide.

Wigoons very much deserved the win but it was a very poor game and could be one of the worse Grand Finals so far. It will be a struggle to give us a 5 mins of match highlights.

We can talk about funding, league structure, salary caps, or whatever, but the best (and easiest) thing the game here can do to improve itself is to fix the ruck and the play the ball. Honestly, the wrestling and constant slowing the game down is killing the spectacle.
Refs think being lenient and 'letting the game flow' is the way to go, but it clearly isn't working. They introduced the 6 again to speed the game up, but they never use it.

There's no happy medium with ruck speed. I can remember threads on here 15-20 years ago bemoaning the scootathon nature of games. If you had a hooker who was quick out of play the ball you could march up the field really quickly and easily and people would complain that we weren't getting to see any classy halfback play, no structured attacks to overcome well set defenses.

Fast forward to today and it's the opposite. Dummy half scoots are far less common, and most of the game is attackers running at a set defensive line that is well organised and difficult to get past

The 2008 world cup was the turning point. The consensus was that the speed of the ruck in SL resulted in England not being able to handle the wrestling tactics of the southern hemisphere teams. Of course, having the likes of Paul Sykes, Lee Smith and Rob Purdham in the starting line up had nothing to do with it


Despite the wrestling, the NRL seem to have got the balance right, but it seems we're not even trying to improve it over here.

The truth is there is no best season ever. Can only really talk in eras. The first decade or so of super league was the best IMO, in terms entertainment, quality of play, there were more good imports then, and the individual quality of British players was exceptional. Think Farrell, Sculthorpe, Cunningham, Harris, Robinson etc. I’m not talking how England did internationally, or comparisons with the far superior Aussie game, I just mean for fans of super league as its own entity, that was the best IMO. There was also a sense of optimism, that things were growing, getting better, developing.

In general, it’s so so stale now. IMO. Everything is so non-descript, this years grand final a prime example.

Prob not best ever as not enough real stars in the game at the moment but best for many years. Pity about the GF… one try and very systematic play from both teams thought when Cats could beat Wigan in the grind they would have played more expansively, think the 2 sun bins and the tough semi final took a way the extra energy they needed at the end. Didn’t reflect the unpredictable and dynamic rugby we have had all season.

What a daft question. I'd say it's been the worst. Two decent teams in Wigan and Catalan the rest are crap. SL is probably at the lowest it's ever been standard wise.

I'd say it's been better than the last few seasons

Aye it wasn't the best was it? Like two battered and tired teams. When you look at the NRL GF you could weep. Like different sports. Mind you there were no Nathan Cleary's or Adam Reynolds' on the field either. It is what it is!