 |
| 
 |
| Rank | Posts | Team |
| Player Coach | 139 | No
Team
Selected |
| Joined | Service | Reputation |
| Sep 2009 | 16 years | |
| Online | Last Post | Last Page |
| Oct 2012 | Oct 2012 | LINK |
| Milestone Posts |
|
| Milestone Years |
|
|
| Location |
|
| Signature |
|
TO BE FIXED |
|
| Quote SmokeyTA="SmokeyTA"If it isnt hard enough, its too easy. Surely this isnt new information for you? If you are arguing it wasnt hard enough, you are arguing it was too easy. You are arguing it wasnt hard enough, you say so above, So you are arguing it was too easy. Exceot it wasnt, it was harder than anyone else has managed.
Your point is clear, you have made it plenty of times, 5th werent punished enough for finishing 5th. To use your word it wasnt 'hellish' enough. 1st isnt rewarded enough for finishing 1st, 2 home ties guaranteed, a possible week off, the possible club call, and playing teams below them in the table isnt enough of an advantage.
Your evidence of this is Leeds are SL champions again after finishing 5th, and the teams finishing 1st and 2nd arent, because they didnt receive enough of an advantage and Leeds werent disadvantaged enough, this removes credibility from the qualifying competition as why would you bother finishing 1st if finishing 5th wasnt properly punished/rewarded.
Now stay with me here, Your argument, and your use of supporting evidence is predicated on the premise that were the play-offs in a different format, Leeds wouldnt have won them. If we discount that premise then Leeds victory is evidence of nothing. Now you can say you accept that Leeds could have won the play-offs under any format, but if you did, you would need to accept that means Leeds winning in the play-offs isnt evidence that the play-offs arent hard enough on the club playing 5th. That had your idea been the one used, Leeds could still have ended up champions, in fact, in a 1st v 8th knock out which you propose here Leeds, as the 5th placed team, would have played 4th, Les Catalans, then as the lowest ranked team, the top ranked team, Wigan, and then the next ranked team in the final, Warrington. All in knock out games. Which is what happened and Leeds won them all, and a game against Wakefield. Why you are complaining the system isnt hard enough for a team to win from 5th and then proposing a much easier one?
To move on to what you say you want, a sliding scale of difficulty depending on where you finish. Well we have that. 1st and 2nd get home games and 2nd chance if necessary, 3rd and 4th get a 2nd chance. 5th and 6th get no second chance, need to win 4 and not 3 games, will only play one home game, 7th and 8th get one shot, every game away from home. Which makes it more difficult for the lower ranked team than the system you want.'"
The phrase "BOOOOOOM" springs to mind.
Please post that on every thread where some idiot is moaning about the play-offs.
It all smacks to me of anti-Leeds bias. Just because a team wins it from 5th doesnt mean the system is flawed or else why bother with that many teams in the play-offs in the first place?
In theory any team qualifying can win the final but the route they have to follow gets progressively harder the further down the table they finish. What's wrong with that?
I guarantee if anyone else had won it from 5th there wouldn't be this outcry. | | |
| Rank | Posts | Team |
| Player Coach | 1693 | No
Team
Selected |
| Joined | Service | Reputation |
| Jan 2009 | 16 years | |
| Online | Last Post | Last Page |
| Feb 2014 | Jan 2014 | LINK |
| Milestone Posts |
|
| Milestone Years |
|
|
| Location |
|
| Signature |
|
TO BE FIXED |
|
| Quote RL13="RL13"You're not comparing like with like though.
For starters, a play off series in both the NRL and NFL is a practical necessity. This is down to ambiguous nature of their regular seasons. There is no clear-cut clarity to who was the most consistent team since none of the teams barely even reach playing each other twice. In the NFL (from what I gather anyway, since I'm not a huge fan) there are 32 teams playing in 8 conferences, and each team plays 16 fixtures. How can anyone be certain to who was the best team that year when dealing with such vagueness?
In the NRL - 16 teams each play 22 fixtures. There's 8 lacking fixtures of ambiguity right there. Most Sydney teams play each other twice, which tend to be more intense (due to the rivalry), so the non-Sydney teams may have a slight advantage. Plus, during State of Origin games, most of the players from the top teams go missing, and they have to contend with that disability. There is no logic in having regular season champions in these prestigious organisations.
Super League - we have one extra game, which hardly creates any uncertainty or what ifs. Certainly not to the scale when Rugby League previously had a play off system (pre-74). This again was necessity - 30 teams couldn't play each other twice, as it would have taken FOREVER.'"
Well said. More people should read that. You might as well say the team that wins the FA Cup in football should be the Champions. Thats a better comparison to the structure of the NFL and the NRL than the SL is! | | | |
|
| Rank | Posts | Team |
| Player Coach | 1923 | No
Team
Selected |
| Joined | Service | Reputation |
| Apr 2009 | 16 years | |
| Online | Last Post | Last Page |
| Feb 2019 | Jan 2019 | LINK |
| Milestone Posts |
|
| Milestone Years |
|
|
| Location |
|
| Signature |
|
TO BE FIXED |
|
| Quote Peter Kingsley="Peter Kingsley"The reality is it means nothing for the weekly rounds. We've had 15 years of the grand final and on only 3 occasions has someone outside the top 2 won the competition.
Teams will still try to finish as high as they can because if you finisng in the top 2 you have - 2 home games to get to the grand final with a week off. If you finish lower it is more tricky.
Finishing in the top 2 will be still be the main priority for title challengers and that will give them the best chance of winning the competition.
Leeds have an exceptional record in the grand final, it's the same spine that won 3 grand finals on the trot, an unprecedented achievment and they've managed to overcome the handicap of a lower position to win the trophy again. They are worthy of the tag champions.
Top 8 is too much, but we have what we have and that's the way it's going to. It's nowhere near as detrimental as people are making out.'"
I imagine they will, and whilst not suggesting teams would aim for 5th I do think Leeds twice winning it from 5th has exposed an anomaly within the playoff system, vis, that whilst the top 2 teams are potentially only 2 games from the final, 5th place can get there in 3 games including a Week 1 home fixture against 8th. When you add to this the fact that their Week 2 opponents will have come back from an away fixture against 1st (unless they beat them) it suggests, to me, that coming 5th isn't as disadvantageous as it should be in order to encourage a real race for the top.
The league element accounts for 90% of the competition, after all, so I think league position should affect your playoff structure in a way that it currently fails to; none of this 5v8 or 2v3 nonsense. | | |
| Rank | Posts | Team |
| International Chairman | 6889 | No
Team
Selected |
| Joined | Service | Reputation |
| Dec 2001 | 23 years | |
| Online | Last Post | Last Page |
| Apr 2025 | Feb 2025 | LINK |
| Milestone Posts |
|
| Milestone Years |
|
|
| Location |
|
| Signature |
|
TO BE FIXED |
|
| Quote Dougy="Dougy"For those employed:
If you were paid based on your performance in just one month of the year, would you struggle to work your hardest for the other 11 months?'"  Once again you show you have no idea about how elite athletes are conditioned or the nature of sporting form and confidence. Given that Hetherington said the Leeds team would have been dismantled and many players released had they not at least got to the Grand Final during the poor mid-season run it is implausible to claim that they were not "working their hardest". Unfortunately they were not, at that time, able to win as many games as they wanted. | | |
| Rank | Posts | Team |
| Club Coach | 24769 | Leeds Rhinos |
| Joined | Service | Reputation |
| Dec 2004 | 20 years | |
| Online | Last Post | Last Page |
| Apr 2025 | Feb 2025 | LINK |
| Milestone Posts |
|
| Milestone Years |
|
|
| Location |
|
| Signature |
|
TO BE FIXED |
|
| Quote Offside Monkey="Offside Monkey"I can't be bothered to go through all 24 pages, but surely there's no point in having a playoff to decide the champions and then complaining when a team placed 5th win it?
I don't like the current playoff schedule, but Leeds beat 3 of the 4 teams that placed above them in the league (away from home). The only team higher up that they didn't beat were Saints and, let's face it, they've never worried about knocking them out before.
In the majority of years, the GF winners have been from one of the top couple of places, we've had two years (out of what, 13?) where a team has won it from 5th, but this happens to be a group of players that, even before their 2011 victory, had achieved a pretty special record. As long as they've got Sinfield leading them and can manage to get Peacock taped back together for the final, they'll continue to impress on the big day.
Don't deny the achievement, or indeed the romance of what they've done over the last 6 years. To do so would make you look like a bitter, whinging, sore losing misery guts.
Its other teams jobs to take the trophy from them. Saints, Wire and Wigan have all beaten Leeds plenty of times in the weekly rounds, but fall short on the big day. You can't tell me that Leeds "just aren't trying" during the weekly rounds.'"
 | | | |
|
| Rank | Posts | Team |
| Player Coach | 1693 | No
Team
Selected |
| Joined | Service | Reputation |
| Jan 2009 | 16 years | |
| Online | Last Post | Last Page |
| Feb 2014 | Jan 2014 | LINK |
| Milestone Posts |
|
| Milestone Years |
|
|
| Location |
|
| Signature |
|
TO BE FIXED |
|
| Quote MjM="MjM":DOH: Once again you show you have no idea about how elite athletes are conditioned or the nature of sporting form and confidence. Given that Hetherington said the Leeds team would have been dismantled and many players released had they not at least got to the Grand Final during the poor mid-season run it is implausible to claim that they were not "working their hardest". Unfortunately they were not, at that time, able to win as many games as they wanted.'"
perhaps its you who has no idea. Elite athletes cannot force there bodies through the pain barrier when the end result has no consequence on whether you win the title or not. Could you bash your body to its absolute limit for 27 weeks when you know its only the last 4 games that matter? Its psychological more that physical.
You could certainly push your body further if you knew that every single game counted at the season's end. Every single victory mattered, every single try scored mattered - but they don't, not until week 1 of the playoffs anyway.
That's why this season has been the worst as a spectacle since SL began. It could get progressively worse unless the playoff format is changed. | | | |
| |
All views expressed are those of the author and not necessarily those of the RLFANS.COM or its subsites.
Whilst every effort is made to ensure that news stories, articles and images are correct, we cannot be held responsible for errors. However, if you feel any material on this website is copyrighted or incorrect in any way please contact us using the link at the top of the page so we can remove it or negotiate copyright permission.
RLFANS.COM, the owners of this website, is not responsible for the content of its sub-sites or posts, please email the author of this sub-site or post if you feel you find an article offensive or of a choice nature that you disagree with.
Copyright 1999 - 2025 RLFANS.COM
You must be 18+ to gamble, for more information and for help with gambling issues see https://www.begambleaware.org/.
Please Support RLFANS.COM
|
|
|
| POSTS | ONLINE | REGISTRATIONS | RECORD |
|---|
| 19.67M | 1,551 | 80,283 | 14,103 |
|
