After last nights bitter disappointment and venom on these very pages, I would ask all just to take a pace back, let Leeds and Eddie Hemmings get on with their whining and us to get on with plan B.

However - a week or two ago this forum debated the value of the end of season competition called the 'The Play-Offs and Grand Final'.

Dont get me wrong I was as upset as everyone else last night - I want Wigan to win every trophy on view - but some of the forum members views on this series of Poker (for that is what it is) took me aback.

After grinding our way through 24 games and emerging top of the pile after a 6 month endurance in all conditions, player availability etc etc, why in the cold light of day do we fall for this hype that 'to be champions we have to win the Grand Final?'

The competition we play first and foremost is Super LEAGUE, not Super PLAYOFFS.

Some of us feel bad about last night, as I say I still want us to win this trophy, but how will all of you feel if a team with 50% or so of our season long accumulated points (Hull KR) go on to lift the trophy? True Champions? Worthy Champions? Just because they win 4 games of Poker at the end of the season?

Will everybody on this forum bow their heads to them and say, 'these really are the champions of the English game?'

Its a joke! Our competition would be a laughing stock. Half the leaders points but crowned champions...Mmmm

Having so many teams in this mini series devalues it and actually bolsters our claim as Super LEAGUE winners. In fact thats how it was for the first 2 years until they introduced The Poker Playoffs to squeeze as much cash as they could out of us before the winter shutdown.

Its all so contrived. Its all so Sky. Its just the Premiership all over again but peversely hyped up to be more important than the Super League competition itself.

Wigan have already won Super League. End of.

Only if the top placed team chokes out. By next weekend all teams (except Saints who finished 2nd) will have played teams finishing above them.

If Saints win through to the final and Wigan don't make it far enough to face them, you can hardly blame the system for that as Wigan will have lost to 2 teams below them.

Yes.

(Unless you are saying that some teams either threw or didn't try in some games this year, in which they would need to be investigated by the RFL)

You can't be seriously suggesting teams approach weekly rounds in the same way they would if there were no play-offs. They clearly don't - top sides often rest players they would have played under first past the post.

Teams also prepare for the season differently - aiming to be at full tilt in the play-offs rather than leaving everything they have in the regular season.

Correct.

In 1998.

12 years ago.

I think the reflection is that Wigan are still a year away from taking the GF.