No, basically we haven't been champions since 1955.....We've won play off competitons when they were a Cup comp, and topped tables when it meant zilch.

.... though of course when we won the 86 premiership we did beat (let the record show that we stuffed em m'lud) the champions (and table toppers) Halifax in the final.

So on that basis we were like Leeds.

Does it still not count?

You can claim the 1986 one to Aussies because if you tell them we "won a Premiership" in 1986 they will think that means the Grand Final, so our barren streak is only as long as Parramatta's.

.

I reckon it's Casual Des the Stupid Postman or whatever.

No it does not count. The 'premiership' was one thing, the Championship is another.

Please can we have a 'sticky' on this as it's getting tedious?

Ok I will desist from mentioning it again ,if someone will explain one simple fact to me.

The Premiership was a knock out competion at the end of the season played between teams in the upper part of the final league table.

The Championship is a knock out competion at the end of the season played between teams in the upper part of the final league table.

WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE (baring a subtle change in name) ??????

Well, the main difference was that, back in 1986, the sport denoted that the winner of The Premiership were not Champions where as the sport now denotes that the winner of The Superleague Playoffs (assume that's what you mean by Championship) are the Champions. It's absurd to suggest that, simply because there was a similar competition a few years back that had different implications you can somehow superimpose that on today's competition.

The Premiership was an end of season cup comp. The championship was decided by a league format. We don't operate that way any more and I simply don't understand the confusion.

I would think that the main difference is that RL now has a showcase event to end their season and decide the ultimate champions in a winner-takes-all match....The Premiership we won in 1986 was basically a two-bit comp, which was of little interest to anybody outside of the two clubs taking part in the final.

Can anybody remember the crowd for that Wire v Halifax game and compare it to this year's GF?.....I was there and remember a mainly empty ground - Was probably no more than 15,000 there, which straight away demonstrates the difference between the two events, seeing has the GF now gets 70,000 and a decent amount of media attention.

Whatever people's thoughts and opinions on how we decide our champions, it has to be said we have created a pretty good sporting event, which is often of a high quality and a decent amount of drama for the neutral to enjoy....Its definitely one of the best things that has come from our sport in recent times and it would be silly to abandon it, just because some short sighted people have a problem with it.

in 1986 Halifax were crowned Champions and won 19 games over the League season.
Warrington won 20 games and finished in fourth...

how can that be fair that the Champions can actually win less games than the teams in second,third and fourth positions? If only we had a play off system back then to sort out the champions from the chancers..........


whats this thread about again.........

I agree that it is a pretty good sporting event and thereby I have a problem with it, (sorry for being "tedious" and "short sighted"icon_wink.gif. The GF is a one off, a cup competition IMO and for those 'historians' that claim for a majority of years that's how RL has crowned its Champions and therefore its sacricsanct I will offer a different view and point out that for many years the play offs were taken from a large league format where teams were part time and due to travel and costs not everyone played everyone else in an equal home/away format. your fixtures were organised along county divisions and the play offs therefore regularised the seasons' campaign.

Now in SL we have 14 teams and all working from a similar cost base, income and restraint and apart from Magic Weekend, (another farce), we play all the other teams twice thanks to the M62 and the invention and availabilty of a team sharrah. I just don't understand the lack of appeal in a first past the post system when the set up is clearly designed to equalise a professional competition.

Not a problem with we all knew the rules argument, a sincere well done to Leeds they were the best team on the day

Crowds for Warrington's last three appearances in end-of-season finals:

Championship Final 1955 - 49,434
Premiership final 1986 - 13,683
SL Final 2012 - 70,676

That's because Halifax drew 6 games that season. They won 19, drew 6 = 44 points. Warrington won 20, drew 1 = 41 points. Halifax only lost 5 games, we lost 9. Perfectly fair really?

And a few more facts
That give the following years Play off details
Yes they really did happen
just been totally forgotten/disregarded by all and sundry

Semi Final May 10th St Helens 8 Warrington 18 R. Whitfield Knowsley Road 12,828

T: B. Ledger
G: B. Ledger
P. Loughlin

T: D. Drummond
B. Johnson
J. Ropati
G: P. Bishop (2)
F: P. Bishop (2)


Semi Final May 10th Wigan 18 Halifax 10 G. Kershaw Central Park 22,457

T: A. Goodway
S. Hampson
J. Lydon
D. Stephenson
G: J. Lydon

T: G. Eadie
S. Wilson
G: C. Whitfield


Final May 17th Wigan 8 Warrington 0 K. Allatt Old Trafford 38,756

T: J. Lydon
G: H. Gill
D. Stephenson

I've tried explaining this myself many times in the past but people simply aren't receptive to it I'm afraid. Tradition trumps all and they're not interested in the original logical reasoning behind using a playoff system to determine the champions, it simply always was a playoff system and that's all they care about.

Considering in many other areas history and the reasons for things being the way they are (broken time payments, the social divide, the fact Northern clubs routinely handed the southern teams their asses, etc) is a subject of interest to lots of RL fans, it's pretty sad really.

I have to say though that, as the rules stand, I think the sport has an absolutely fantastic end of season show piece (if you ignore the fact that the qualifying games attendances are poor), which really lets the sport end the season with a bang. But, also as the rules stand, I'm having a hard time defending the sport to casual observers who are interested in RL but simply won't stop saying "You decide your champions with a playoff system? Well what's the point of an even home&away fixture list then?" - I've simply stopped defending it now and started shrugging my shoulders.

57?

Not necessarily. Those of us who point out the tradition behind playoffs are usually (just like on this thread) responding to suggestions that they are a new fangled gimmick invented by Sky.



It's quite simple. A neat home&away fixture list (plus one neutral match) provides equal opportunity for clubs to attract revenue. If, for example, saints got a home match v Hull (who generally bring a good number), but we got one v Hudds instead (who don't), then that is unequal financially. That was less important in the old days when the clubs were less reliant in income.

Whoops, yes fair point, I should have included that one. I was there and remember it well.

And you will remember that it poured down all day



And to make matters worse the flag that I bought..the colours ran in all the rain £ 1.50 totally wasted



But it was our first Old Trafford appearance and despite losing I thought that we were at last becoming a" big player " in our wonderful game

"The season ends in a giant crapshoot. The play-offs frustrate rational management because unlike the long regular season, they suffer from the sample size problem". So wrote Michael Lewis in [i Moneyball[/i, regarding the baseball season in the US. The same argument could equally be applied to all the other major American sports, and indeed rugby league both here and in Australia.

Oh they're certainly not new fangled. But the original reasoning behind using them was very much because of the logistical implausibility of running a true league fixture list in an era where overnight stays/journeys would be required, where said travel and stopovers would be very expensive and would very much conflict with the 'day jobs' of the players. This is a fact that should not be lost to the discussion. You simply can't point to the history of something without mentioning the history of something.

I'm quite happy to accept that we use playoffs, even in a manner for which they were not initially devised in the sport, if the structure is right. For me, the best structure we've used since 1998 was the initial Top 5 one.



Yeah, I get the economic arguments for it - what I'm referring to is a fundamental problem for Rugby League - selling itself. It's a difficult sell to a lot of the public. We can all sit here and call the uninitiated unpleasant names, and say that they're blinded by football, and so on and so forth (as has happened here previously when I've tried to make this point), but the fundamental fact is that in order to sell a product you have to produce a product that people want. I'm afraid that of the people I know and meet who have a passing interest in Rugby League, most regard the current system as a joke. They get that it's entertaining, they get that it's a great spectacle, but they continually argue to me (and I can never find a good counter-argument to this one) that it renders the majority of the 26 game season leading up to the playoffs as totally inert in the context of the championship.

I share this view. RL is a reasonably sized sport in the UK behind Footy, RU, Cricket, Golf, athletics and F1. It probably sits ahead of Snooker and Darts. We need to give over on the World domination ideas.

Remember more people tonight will be watching Man U at home than watch an entire SL round fixtures of a typical weekend.

As for Sky viewing figures - The big opening weekend game of Wigan vs Leeds this season attracted 220,000 Sky viewers*. Meanwhile I hear today Time Team on Channel 4 is being axed for falling to the 1M level. Sort of puts things into perspective.


*www.code13rugbyleague.com/2012/02/21/super-league-viewing-figures-hit-top-10/

It should have been axed for being plain dull.

Our other 'problem' is a comparison with the 15 a side game and their TV deal. Like it or not, they have a product that appeals to a broader spectrum geographically in European terms, with top teams in Paris, London, Glasgow, Cardiff, Dublin, and all points in between as well as the ABC1's that advertisers are after unless it's Tetleys Bitter and Hollands pies youre trying to flog. Sorry a bit off topic there but Wires 71 got me started

It's an unfair comparison putting up sky figures against a terrestrial channel. Premier League games on Sky average 1.2 million; not far from Time Team's audience.