Mike wrote:DaveO wrote:First Try Tickle wrote:The less number of teams in the play offs means the early season games mean something. There are currently 5 strong teams in the league, we need to be pushing for points early in the season to get a foothold in the league.
But the statistics show that is not true. Any playoff system including the one we have now with four team which is the minimum you can have and call it such, means you can get a tilt at being champions having still lost a fair few games finishing fourth. Last year Saints in 4th lost 13 and 2nd placed Leeds 10. When you can lose that many games the perception will remain that the regular season is just a qualifier for the real event.
As for relegation and promotion, the bottom 2 teams of SL should play off to stay up, and top 2 of the championship to play off to go up.
2 Million pound games on the same day, followed by the 2 Super League Grand Final play off games on the next day. Be like a magic weekend, but with meaning.
They aren't going to do that and a big part of the reason for dropping the S8's is the fact four teams face the uncertainty of relegation with the S8's. It seems those running SL think it should be the team finishing bottom who face the drop rather than potentially a team that finished 9th after the regular rounds.
Sounds like you're advocating for a first past the post championship. Season over after 10 rounds some years. Also very inflexible, because without the playoffs you have to have a "fair" fixture schedule where the number of teams dictates the number of rounds.
I am and the idea the season isn't over after 10 rounds for some teams in a playoff system is a huge myth anyway.
Of course as the season goes on in the first past the post system fewer and fewer teams have the chance to win the league but what, exactly, is wrong with that?
It does Premier League football no harm. With that you end up with the title race down to about four to six teams usually by about half way. Everyone seems to accept it and sees it as no less exciting. Even as happened last season with Man City as dominant as they were it was not a done deal until well after Christmas and instead of moaning a load of teams who were not good enough didn't get another crack at being crowned champions despite losing a shed load of games, it was praise for the football City played.
The alternative which we have is a team in 4th losing 13 games (as in my example) still has a tilt at the championship. It rewards mediocrity and devalues the entire season. How RL fans fell for this tripe I will never know. It's an artificial construct that allows teams to lose half their games and still have a pop at the title.
One of the selling points of the playoffs was it would up the intensity and get us up there with the Aussies. It's had the exact opposite effect. Many regular season games are feeble excuses for what we see delivered in the NRL. Somehow over there they have a playoff system yet each round delivers up several intense and excellent games. That does not work here.
Another selling point was that teams would have to peak at the right time so it was all leading up to an epic contest and this would improve standards. While it's obviously true teams in the playoffs bust a gut to win their games the entire season is sacrificed for currently 3 fixtures and who is ready to take advantage has as much to do who is lucky with injuries at that time than anything else and again there is no evidence standards have gone up.
As to uneven fixtures, that is easy to address. We already play each team home & away outside the S8's and with them gone there is no reason not to carry on doing that. The magic game which means there are 23 instead of 22 rounds (before the S8's) could switch to being a round of the CC (which would make that more exciting and get more fans watching a CC round as well).
