Can't we just ignore that game and root for us to win both our games. Doing so will mean we make the playoffs.

If you beat Catalans and we beat Cas then we could quite possibly get 5th and set up another derby.



Personally of all the teams we could face I would prefare Huddersfield who could yet finish anywhere from 4th to 6th. Theres certainly going to be alot of jostling for position.

Is 8th so prestigious? It's no achievement to finish in the bottom half of the table. Having an eight team play off system in a fourteen team league rewards mediocrity.

Neither Hull team deserves a play off place - it should be a top five play off at best.

You'd looking at a lot of dead rubbers without P&R. You could have a premiership again like they in the 70s-90s, with the league leader being the big prize.

I think the Grand Final would be too great a sacrifice at the moment, however.

5th-8th - it's not even that big of a reward. It's only a wild card shot. All the advantages are with the top 4 - rightly.

Not workable. Top 6 at a push - and I'd have preferred it to stay at that - but a top 5 playoff system simply doesn't offer a large enough playoff series. Too many meaningless games in the second half of the season, too few playoff games for Sky and for revenue generation.

In any case, finishing in the top 8 isn't rewarding anything in and of itself. The chances of any club outside the top 4 or 5 actually winning the competition is pretty low, and anyone ending the playoffs in positions 7 & 8 get a pretty small payout.

Martyn Sadler wrote an interesting article about the current play off system in this weeks League Express. He suggested there is no real benefit in finishing 1st rather than 2nd, save the League Leaders shield and the Club Call (the latter of which is debatable). He also pointed out that teams finishing 3rd and 4th face a very tough schedule of playing one of the top two away in week one then (should they lose) a team coming off the back of a win in week two.

In the two years of the top 8 system no team finishing in 3rd or 4th have won a home game in the play offs.