I don't think finishing top is detrimental - or do I think the heirarchy do :-/
I love the club, but also realise the importancy of the end of the season - Challenge Cup and play offs mean GLORY, and are taken into the following year - not league leader shield (wrong I know).

'tis a bit of a sad indictment of our game, WUW

We invite a team that was (quite frankly, crap, last year) into Super League, and they're getting pummled most weeks.

The Comics have a SL license for 3 years, and they're currently worse than 5h1t3. I can't see any player (of SL quality) in his right mind, that's out of contract this year, that'll want to go to Widnes for the next 2 years, to improve them. So in effect (unless they've got a stellar youth system), they'd better get used to the pummelings, pretty quickly, and then go back down. We need to look again at licenses/promotion & relegation.

Last year it was always about finishing 1st after we got knocked out of the cup, this year Smithy is resting/rotating his squad more with a view to being the healthiest @ the back end of the season

Even though it didn't manage to get us to Old Trafford last season, isn't ClubCall something we'd still rather have, especially when choosing where to face a team like Saints and Wigan (Even though we win alot at the DW)?

If we're slowly starting to hit form I don't see why we can't have all three prizes.

On a side note, when did the optimism come back?

Funny you should say that, i was thinking about starting a thread on that.

The cup semi final for me.

I think the start of the season, was compared to last year, excruciating to watch, the dropped balls, the poor defence, we were a shell of our former shadow, then we've slowly just tightened up every week, a little bit, tiny tiny amounts so you wouldn't notice it.

Then we went to catalans and did a number on them, again it wasn't the most polished performance but to go to abroad to where they were unbeaten was a big statement.

And it was only after that, that i looked at the table properly for the first time this year and it suprised me, that are points for/against wasn't that bad, adn that we were where we were. We're really flying under the radar at the moment, Early attention has been on the giants and catalan, and to a lesser extent the self proclaimed 'best team in the land' wigan and even leeds, despite us being above them we've been over looked.

And you know what, i'm happy with it, i'm buying into what tony's doing, i thought weeks ago that if he was trying to replicate what Leeds did last year, that was a dangerous dangerous game, but it seems like he's getting it spot on with the rotation and resting.

I'm very very optimistic now.