The magic weekend has run its course, time to scrap it.

You're asking for a bit too much there, Royal Wire. Common sense and the RFL? Mutually exclusive really.
As a Wigan fan we played Saints 5 years out of 6 at Magic.
Played Leeds four on the trot.
If we'd played you guys last year we'd have played each other four on the bounce.

That's boring! Surely by now the RFL would have found a better way of sorting the six game fixtures?
A plain old drawing balls out of a bag would be better than this shambles.

I quite like Magic but they need to stop messing with the venue and date.

Same place, same time every season. Maybe even pick the fixtures the week (or 2 week) before in a 1st v 2nd, 3rd v 4th format to try and keep the games fair and as closely contested as possible.

Yes keep it at Newcastle been best venue for me and the fans seem to love it . Maybe try something different with fixtures and have a Lancashire v Yorkshire theme each team who wins gets a point and see who comes out on top just a bit more interest

That's the best idea iv'e heard as a concept for the Magic Weekend.Nobody knows who they are playing until a week before the weekend. The only problem being people wont know what day to buy a ticket for and getting time off work, babysitters etc but i like the idea in principle.

That's an issue that would need ironing out yes (maybe do it a month before, but then the table might change dramatically in that time), BUT the idea is that it's a weekend event which IMO is why it needs to be somewhere you would go for the weekend as opposed to Manchester or Liverpool. So it would be Newcastle or Cardiff for me with Newcastle pinching it because it's easier to get there for the day if you want to.

Indeed it is.

If we are going to keep it then it does need revamping.
1) Decide which teams are to play on each day
2) Have a draw one hour before the first game is due to start to determine who plays who and in which order.

This will add excitement for the fans as they don’t know who they will be playing until game day.
Yes teams won’t have had time to prepare for the opposition but that adds to the event and helps to create the occasional shock.
It would also get crowds into the stadium from the start, especially if they hype up the draw and make it a real event.
But whatever they decide to do it definitely needs to be reinvented.

To be honest, most years I’d be inclined to agree but this year I’m just excited about the prospect of it going ahead with fans in the stadium.

So all six teams have to get changed and warmed up at the same time ready to play, then four of them find out they're not playing yet? Besides the fact there are few stadiums with the facilities to allow six teams to all get changed and warmed up at the same time, it would just be messing players and coaching staff about needlessly. There would be heavy criticism of the RFL from the teams for being amateurish and rightly so.

I think it would be pretty poor from a fan's perspective too. You're asking people to buy travel, accommodation and tickets for what could well be three mismatches. I know from our group I can get six-eight of us to pay up for Wigan v Saints/Warrington/Leeds with a bit of arm twisting. For random opposition if would be a harder sell, most likely just two of us. I'll watch any rugby but it's asking a lot of time and money from casual fans to potentially watch Wigan v Hull KR.

We need these to either be evenly matched on paper, or derbies. Of course the problem with derbies is that if would mean the same games every year. 1 v 2, 3 v 4 etc from last season's table works, or alternatively from a set point during the current season (e.g when everyone has played each other once).

great joke pal.

Do the RFL organise SuperLeague's fixtures?

My take on this: make the draws from the top and bottom halves of the table for each day (and announce in advance which days the games are on i.e. top half Saturday, bottom half Sunday.

Draw the games for Saturday on the day before live on Sky Sports News, and then draw the games for Sunday before the first game on a Saturday so fans and teams know a day in advance who they will be playing.

This has the benefit of keeping some mystery and excitement over the fixtures whilst also deciding who plays who in a 'fairer' manner (ignoring the possibility of the Illuminati fixing the draw with hot and cold balls in the bag (oo-er)).

What's reckon?

Are less people really going because we know in advance who we will be playing? I think this is solving a problem that doesn't exist, and is more likely to hurt sales than help them. A lot of people aren't going to pay for a weekend ticket and accommodation if one day involves all the worst teams. Many of the fans of the best teams (who are also generally the ones with the most fans) will go up and back in a day if you do that. That in turn makes it less attractive to the cities bidding if people are more likely to go up and back on the day rather than spending money in the town on the night and paying for accommodation.

You also still have the issue of it being less attractive to casual fans if there's a 40% chance we won't be playing Saints/Wire/Leeds. Then if we do draw them it's late notice to arrange going to the game, especially given that it's hours of travel and the games are on TV. On the subject of TV, you can't advertise ahead who is playing, and it won't show in the TV pages or TV guide. That's not exactly a great recipe for getting casual viewers to watch it. Then those who do realise who is playing will probably not bother with the whole of the Sunday if there are none of the best teams playing all day, rather than maybe leaving it on all day if there are some of the best teams to look forward to.

The just scrap it altogether, as I said earlier it’s run it’s course in its current format. It doesn’t interest me one bit and looking at recent attendances I’m not alone in saying that.

I never said anything about them all having to get changed and warming up. I said have the draw an hour before the first game is scheduled. Only the two teams in the first draw would need to change.
The whole event is becoming monotonous,Maybe turn it into a nines event?

Yeah so if the draw is an hour before the first game then all 6 teams will need to have got changed and have begun their warm up when the draw is taking place, because they will have to prepare assuming that they will be the first team on until told otherwise.

It's not Men's League where they just turn up, do a couple of laps to shift their hangovers and kick off. These are professional athletes playing an extremely physical game, their pre-match routines are planned ahead and start hours before kick off with what they eat, meetings, stretching etc. I can just imagine Daryl Powell's face as he gets the team over to the stadium for 10:00, then finds out they aren't playing for another eight hours. It would be a fun interview at least!

It's just putting loads of strain on the whole pre-match process (which isn't as simple as you seem to think it is) with no real benefit. Clubs and fans alike benefit from knowing in advance what games are happening and when they are happening. It would give plenty ammunition to the people who already think the RFL are incompetent and make complicated changes every year for the sake of it.

Nines - maybe. It depends whether you would get the buy-in from the clubs to be honest if there are no competition points at stake. If teams went full strength to win it then it could be great, but the cynic in me says they wouldn't risk any first teamers getting injured and damaging their chances in the SL/CC, so it would become a reserves competition. I wouldn't be against Magic Weekend being used for a CC round of they did change it. That way you're not creating an uneven fixture list or having the same games every year. You do run the risk of having a lot of mismatches though if the draw isn't kind.

We need to do this just for powell's reaction

Last 16 of the cup would revamp the idea but that's got serious implications for tv contracts

To be fair to SL/RFL, they did say that the teams will play on the same day in 2021 as they were scheduled in 2020, so those fans with tickets for 2020 could still use them this year

It got boring circa 3/4 years ago. Should be binned off, no question

I don't think it needs binning off, just revamping a bit. It's got repetitive. As much as i love the Wigan v Saints derbies and loved the Sam Tomkins solo try etc at magic, those derbies are special and should be limited to 2 games a season, 1 at home and 1 away unless we draw them in the cup. This can be said with Warrington too, with the loop fixtures, magic weekend and the guarantee we draw them in the challenge cup those games don't get me excited anymore. The Leeds games were always crackers at Magic. Sky are overdoing the big games thinking they are what everyone wants to see but me personally thinks its been way over diluted. I don't want to be playing St Helens and Warrington every couple of months. I want months in advance to look forward to it. It builds the occasion more and is less meaningless than losing 2 out of 5 games per season against the same team. Why oh why can't the authorities not see the game needs injecting with new ideas.A small group of men bereft of ideas killing it for tens of thousands of us.

Some of these ideas are far too complex. The phrase, “Keep It Simple, Stupid” springs to mind here.

None of this decide a week before who’s playing who, or an hour before in The Enforcer esque type suggestions. A ‘Lancashire v Yorkshire’ theme is a tired old idea. We’re as well going the whole hog and having Brexit v Remain. Magic Weekend works as a concept because it’s simple. Our games v Warrington are always exciting games so I can see why we’re playing each other. Having said that in the absence of Good Friday v Saints this year I’d have liked to have seen us play Saints.

For me simple is better, so with that in mind fixtures should quite simply go off the season end table;

Grand Final replay
3 v 4
5 v 6
7 v 8
9 v 10
11 v newly promoted

Obviously there’ll be some changing about should the Grand Finalists not be 1&2 but that’s evenly matched and simple. It’s not hard to follow.

The trouble with RL half the time is that we go for these hugely complex ideas which sound good but in reality are just confusing to explain and therefore turns people off. Just keep things simple.

I'm a big fan of the KISS method (Keep it Simple Stupid)

That would usually throw up an even contest with the odd exception. 2018 - Leeds v Cas and what would have been Saints v Salford. Otherwise it's probably the best method