Now this is a serious question, without meaning to sound bitter about not making the grand final (fair play to leeds, outplayed us last week and deserved it tonight), but how would you aim to play next season? seeing leeds win the grand final from fifth shows that all you need is a decent season and then to hit a good run of form at the end, so would you rather just play mediocre rugby and secure a top 8 spot then come into form in the four playoff games? or mirror this season, play well all year and go one step further?

for me, although winning the grand final would be great, if we had finished outside the top 2/3 in the regular season i wouldnt really feel like we deserved it, so for me i would like to repeat this season but go one step further, even though its not really neccesary to be at your best for the majority of the year.

thoughts?

This season Warrington have been universally acclaimed for playing the best rugby league people have seen in years. I'd settle for more of the same please.

We will still be the team to beat next season,having said that fare play to Leeds they came they saw they concoured,been there seen it done it kinda thing they had a wobble at the beginning of the season and came good when it mattered..

More of the same from Warrington Fast,Flowing Rugby not really bothered if we dont dick teams by 50 or 60 points as long as we entertain..

Yeah but you are not champions! The goal is to win the GF. Your season ended with a trophy nobody wants without the trophy that sits on it.

You were only excited about the hub cap as you have never won a GF or been there. Once you have you realise the hub means nowt without the prize every team aims for at season start.

People are making out like Leeds planned this whole thing, they didn't. They were inept for the first half of the season, then found some form by which time the top three had left them for dead and they were forced to settle for 5th and mounted an assualt on the GF from there. They'd much preferred to have won the league and gone at it that way but in the end had to take the difficult route and did it incredibly well.

Just because we fluffed our lines, the way to get to OT is still to finish 1st or 2nd. We'll be aiming to win that league again without question, as will Leeds.

After such a great season it seems odd but The HJ does not seem like a fortress to me. We lost 7 games all season and 5 of them were at home!
Next Season, make every home game a final.

Yeah but you fail to recognise Leeds got to wembley too! If they had gone out early and not rested players they could have finished fourth.

Leeds were poor at times but made both major finals winning the biggest prize on offer!

Noble was always the master of starting poor, building up and around September/October making a run for the summit.

It seems his protege has carried it on. You cant just decide how to start a season however, if you play well you win, sometimes you can play poorly and lose or win, i dont think you can intentionally end up in a story like Leeds did or the Bradfords / Wigans under Noble did.

Thing is, we never 'lost form' going into the playoffs, the week before we stonked Huddersfield, wins at Hull, Catalans, Wigan etc.

We just got beat by a penalty in a knockout, we weren't great on the day but we didn't lose form. The GF really was played at the HJ that night, that's as close as anybody has come to stopping Leeds.

I think there's things we didn't do well on the night, handling nerves, handling the occasion etc, but we didn't lose form.

If we finish 1st again next year, we'll have a damn good chance of winning SL, I wouldn't say the same from 5th.

Win every game. I don't care how we win, just win. Does it matter if a golfer gets a par four from a good drive, good iron shot, and two putts...or from three 'hacks' and a putt.....no, it doesn't, it's just a score written down. You don't get anymore points for winning with flair (though it's nice to do)

As I've said many times on here (and Serge has, earlier), make the HJ a 'fortress'. Home defeats are difficult to take, particularly to teams you 'should' be beating.

And obviously (as this season shows), save your best rugby for the end of the season.
Leeds have 'stunk the house out' at times, this season, but (as the way the comp is structured), they are GF winners, like it or not.

Prey your big game players chose not to have their worst performances, in the biggest games.

Play exactly the same,if we play the same way a grand final will come.

Lets not forget we did what Leeds did this year back in 1986, in fact we actually sacked our coach mid way through that season and when we appointed tony Barrow as coach with Boyd as his assistant we went on an eight match unbeaten run managed to finish 4th and then beat Wembley bound Wigan and Champions Halifax to win The Premiership final. We had plenty of average seasons again after that but couldnt replicate that feat

it will be a long long time before a team copies the Leeds way of winning it and more than likely next year the finalists will come from the top 3 so lets finish top again and have teams fear playing us.

Spot on, play like we did all last season and we will be at O/T.

Play our first team for the first half of the season and get to the top then play our reserves the second half of the season go down to about 5th or 6th in the table then bring our first team back for the playoffs and win the grand final

All we need to remember is that it's a sprint not a marathon

Am not going to be bothered when we lose a game next season, Leeds lost 11 and didn't win any against the top 4 until the Play-offs.

Finish top 4.

Win your next 2 games and boom your a Grand Final.

Simples 4th will do me.

Incorrect! Try and get your facts right

Which bit troll?

Oh right you beat Hudds one before the Play-offs.

Soz

Good lad! But you are totally right and will get a feel for how things are when you are near the top more regular. Finishing top matters not! It a sense of job done to win the hub cap and the GF! But this year probably feel as good as 04 and 07! Maybe a bit better as we were so poor at times.

It should be business as usual next season we will still be the team others most fear. We just need to make sure we learn from this years play off defeat by:

- not letting sentiment rule common sense by giving an old hand a final run out at home in the place of a better player (Jon Clarke over Ben Harrison? in the biggest game of the season? REALLY !!)

- keep the players out of Nandos and all the other fast food establishments they were boasting on twitter about stuffing themselves in during the run up to the leeds game

- Get the players mentally right so they dont choke and approach it like any other game

FFS i lock one thread for a boring argument that just went round in circles and you start the same loving argument on another thread pack it in please.

The last team to finish 1st in the table and get knocked out before the Grand Final was St Helens in 2005.

Maybe we could approach the season like St Helens in 2006?

I wouldn't worry too much.

What leeds did this season is a 1st and probably won't be repeated again for many years.

Do what you did this season and you'll be in the grand final.

The winners will continue to come from the top 2 95% of the time.

Don't know what Monaghan's fitness (or Harrisons for that matter.) I trust Smith judgment much more than I do yours.

I follow the players on Twitter and they seem to eat there quite a bit. Given we finished top of the league and scored over a thousand points your line of thinking should surely bring you to the conculsion that Nandos is a rugby league super food?

On the third point I agree. If we ignore for a moment the fact that Leeds played well I think there was an element of us choking. At the very least I thought we were way of the pace and perhaps the week off did more harm than good.

No disrespect to either Leeds or Saints but I actually had a slight grin on my face on Grand Final night because I still felt as though we were a better team than either of them! And the evidence is provided by how well we played throughout the season, doing the double on both, including Wigan.

However, what makes me laugh even more is that when we lifted back to back CC trophies, a fair few people attempted belittling our achievements as its 'only' one-off knock out rugby, yet in theory, the Playoffs/GF are exactly the same process - peak in a short period and you get the big prize.

As for next season, I'm just hoping we can be as enjoyable to watch as we were this year. So I can only ask for more of the same. Any additional honors that come as a result will be great, and I'm sure some will.