Re: Play off system stays. : Mon Nov 28, 2011 2:42 pm  

I'm a fan of the playoffs, and I get them. Some people don't. I think much much more should be made of the League Leaders - perhaps calling them Champions or Premiership winners or something with a trophy and lots of hoo-haa. But the playoffs are a separate competition whose eligible entrants are decided by league position. If we want to go with a socialist approach and turn everybody into potential winners then fine, keep the top eight. However, turn it into a knock-out comp from the outset so that two teams don't have to play each other twice in as many weeks, even winning by exactly the same score and margin in the process. THAT is the completely and utterly stupid element to the RFL's system.

Re: Play off system stays. : Mon Nov 28, 2011 2:43 pm  

weird double post

Re: Play off system stays. : Mon Nov 28, 2011 4:18 pm  

Northampton_Saint wrote:

OK fine - I've decided to base the Premiership title on the same logic and award the trophy for the whole season to Chelsea here and now. They won by the most goals this weekend in the one and only game out of the whole 38 game season that I've now decided to include in the league table standings after all, so well done to them. The 20 odd games left for the rest of the season will be a bit of a downer for all concerned, but Sky are still pumping in the TV money for showing them all, so who cares right? Absolute genius!

Now who's being silly!
It's not your decision and you're logic is flawed...Unless of course you want to award one trophy per weekend...
The 20 odd games after are a total red herring. Unless I'm mistaken the Grand Final has always been what it says on the tin...The Final game..there are no matches after!
Your system is totally random and undeliberated. The Play-offs aren't.
Absolutely not genius.

Wire knew the rules...everyone knew the rules. They won the League Leader's trophy and won it well. This gave them a massive edge coming in to the play-off series (not by the way a single match) to decide the Finalists. They simply didn't raise their game to Championship level when it mattered despite the advantages they earned from their brilliant season.

Re: Play off system stays. : Tue Nov 29, 2011 1:09 am  

Saddened! wrote:

You can't get rid of the sport's biggest game. The Grand Final is firmly established now and is superbly attended.

Cut the 8 to 5 or 6 and make it shorter somehow. but you can't remove it.

Why not? What would be the harm in swapping the value of the two trophies around?

We managed fairly well between 1973–74 and 1997-1998 when the Championship was won by the league leaders.

Heck we happily got along then with a secondary (read - less important) competition in which for the most part the top eight teams in the first division would compete.

Re: Play off system stays. : Tue Nov 29, 2011 4:29 pm  

Tony Stark wrote:

Why not? What would be the harm in swapping the value of the two trophies around?

We managed fairly well between 1973–74 and 1997-1998 when the Championship was won by the league leaders.

Heck we happily got along then with a secondary (read - less important) competition in which for the most part the top eight teams in the first division would compete.

The harm would be in losing one of only two Superleague showcase events. Devalue the event and you devalue the publicity it affords.

Re: Play off system stays. : Wed Nov 30, 2011 2:57 am  

Chief Stinkwort wrote:

The harm would be in losing one of only two Superleague showcase events. Devalue the event and you devalue the publicity it affords.

But you wouldn't be losing the 'showcase' of the event by shifting the importance of the trophies around, certainly not publicity wise. Those outside of the game care little about what title the trophy is awarded for, just that it is an event in which a RL team can win a trophy.

Those fans that currently go to the Grand Final regardless of which teams are in it, purely for the spectacle, are the same kinds of neutral fans that went to the Stones Bitter Premiership Final pre-Sky. And if the RFL/Sky are concerned the attendance would be lower, they could always hold both the SL Grand Final and the Championship Grand Final on the same day at the same venue?

The sport is continuously devalued by the constant SL rule changes & play-off format changes, international competition & rules changes, not to mention the many questionable decisions the RFL makes year round in all areas.

Re: Play off system stays. : Wed Nov 30, 2011 12:49 pm  

Some people need to learn their RL history. I'm sure others have said this on here but RL has pretty much always decided its champions via a play-off system barring a 20 year period when we didn't.

What is this obsession that some people have that our sport must follow what football does? It's ludicrous. Our sport is a far better spectacle and more suited to one off clashes than football. In football you can play for a draw, nick and goal and win without being the better side. In RL it is exceptional hard to follow the same pattern. You can play conservatively yes but you still have to score points whereas in football you play that kind of destructive game (which reared its head in this year's RU world cup). In league you either win or you lose. Draws are rare. Stop comparing us with football and trying to use football logic to determine our game. We are not football and we should not treat it as such.

Re: Play off system stays. : Wed Nov 30, 2011 12:51 pm  

Tony Stark wrote:

Those fans that currently go to the Grand Final regardless of which teams are in it, purely for the spectacle, are the same kinds of neutral fans that went to the Stones Bitter Premiership Final pre-Sky.

How do you know that?

Re: Play off system stays. : Wed Nov 30, 2011 2:49 pm  

McClennan wrote:

Some people need to learn their RL history. I'm sure others have said this on here but RL has pretty much always decided its champions via a play-off system barring a 20 year period when we didn't.

What is this obsession that some people have that our sport must follow what football does? It's ludicrous. Our sport is a far better spectacle and more suited to one off clashes than football. In football you can play for a draw, nick and goal and win without being the better side. In RL it is exceptional hard to follow the same pattern. You can play conservatively yes but you still have to score points whereas in football you play that kind of destructive game (which reared its head in this year's RU world cup). In league you either win or you lose. Draws are rare. Stop comparing us with football and trying to use football logic to determine our game. We are not football and we should not treat it as such.

All I know is I go to footie every week and I see games made meaningful and exciting by the fact that each and every result matters and palpably affects the team's overall success over the course of the whole season. I go to Saints every week and I see games with no excitement or ability to sustain my interest whatsoever as, a few one-off bragging-rights "rivals" games, 2 or 3 challenge cup games and 2 or 3 playoff games aside, the result or team performance of none of them matter at all even slightly as far as Saints' trophy chances are concerned. Out of 30-odd competitive games a season maybe 7 or 8 of them tops are worth anybody getting even vaguely excited about. If you think that makes for a great league system that's good for the future of our sport then please, send me some of whatever it is you're smoking as I could do with some of it right now.

Going to KR was once the eagerly anticipated highlight of my week each and every week - now I can barely be arsed to find out what the latest weekend's results actually were. That excitement is now directed at footie instead. Ten years ago I'd have laughed in your face if you'd suggested that I would ever end up prefering going to see League One football games to seeing Saints, but thanks to the utter t**ts that are running and ruining the sport, that is where I now am.

I can live with the concept of a playoff system, I really can. All you would need to do to make the league exciting again is A. give the team that finishes top a worthwhile accolade for doing so, B. don't give playoff places out in packets of cornflakes to any team that wants them cheapening the quality of the competition and C. give the teams that finish higher in the league a decent advantage for having done so come the playoffs. Do that and everyone's happy.

Re: Play off system stays. : Wed Nov 30, 2011 5:19 pm  

Northampton_Saint wrote:

All I know is I go to footie every week and I see games made meaningful and exciting by the fact that each and every result matters and palpably affects the team's overall success over the course of the whole season.

You could just as easily say that if you lose four games at the start of the season then your season is over and every game afterwards becomes irrelevant under a league system. What chance do Aston Villa, Everton and QPR have now of winning the league? Football is fortunate in that it has UEFA places and cups to play for but if they didn't (and RL doesn't have that format) what would each week mean? A battle to avoid relegation if you're near the bottom otherwise it's a battle for prize money which RL has with a play off system anyway.