The SUPER LEAGUE CHAMPIONSHIP should be given it's own title to show it for what it is. Historically the Champions were always the team that finished top after playing each other home & away, ie they'd finished top after all the fixtures.

After the regular season, came the PREMIERSHIP, since knicked by SKY and renamed as the top 6/8 playoffs, so there is all of the SuperLeague years as history. Nothing when compared to all the history of TGG.

League fans, who know the history remember how to workout who are the true champions before we break off for the close break before we start all over again.

I,too, would like to see the winners of the sl play-offs being given their own name----and maybe even a GRAND FINAL RING as winners of SL last 4/8 - afterall they've nicked stuff from Aussie and Premiership so why not put their heads together and come us with something original!!!!...... grannyfan Cindy

Why come up with something 'original' when the Playoff/Grand Final concept works so well?



Maybe we should have a game of University Challenge instead of a rugby match to decide the champions. That would be original.

I stand to be corrected - but prior to 1973 we always had a playoff system to decide the champions. for 20ish years we had a first past the post sytem - the rest of the time we have had playoffs



as already stated, football is pretty much the only team sport in the world which has first past the post system to decide its champions.

While we're at it, why don't we guarantee that one of the "big four" appears in the Challenge Cup final.

Perhaps we should decide who the SL champions are by using this method:





1)12,000 capacity stadium



2) 10k average gate



3) Average gate that fills at least 40% of your stadiums capacity



4) A turn over of 4 million or more per annum



5) Solvency



6) Top 8 finish in each of the last 3 years



7) A reasonable junior development in the last 3 years



8/ A stadium meeting the standard of a premier sporting competition...in accordance with detailed criteria



9) Geographical location



10) salary cap





All decided by an independent RFL committee of course.

Near enough, the first 10ish seasons were first past the post (although about half of them were county leagues with no national champion) and they used first past the post for two years in the early 60s when they had 2 divisions, but yes playoffs is traditional not first past the post

Plenty.

a tradition in soccer. not RL.

Nope. Traditionally the champions have been the team that won the championship final

… an nvented add-on competition created because the clubs and fans moaned that ending the championship play-offs and giving the title to the team at the top of the table after the end of the regular rounds robbed the top teams of games and therefore income.









include Bowes, saints35 bulls0, Pepe and a number of other posters on this thread. But not, apparently, you





(eg in 69 we nearly did the double: winning the Cup Final and appearing in the championship final (but losing to Leeds iirc) )

I agree!







Why waste 80 minutes on a field to prove anything

Regardless of what method has been used for how long, the team which finishes top of the league after everyone has played everyone else home and away has proven themselves to be, over a sustained period of time, better than every other team, and are worthy of being called the champions.



The winner of a post season cup competition involving maybe two or three games and a fraction of the teams in SL is simply the winner of a post season cup competition.



The reason Sky trump up the play offs is a transparent attempt to dislodge the Challenge Cup final as the single most important game in British Rugby League.

The reason SKY/Super League/RFL want the play off's is that no one knows who the champions are until around eight o'clock on a Saturday night in late September give or take ten or twenty minuets & with a full house at old Trafford & large numbers watching on TV, prior to that eight teams have been in with a chance their fans have had something to look forward to (especially the lower placed sides who may have had a bad injury spell early season). The grand final is slowly making its mark as an occasion in the British sports calender which is good for revenue & the games exposure to a larger audience. The other thing that most people forget is that if the finances permit we can add more teams to Super League & we will then need a play off system to sort out the champions like the NFL in America & that is the system we all enjoyed prior to 1973 (those of us old enough to remember) We can then keep the number of games each player has to play down to a sensible level.