My own personal opinion is that the team who finishes top should be crowned champions end of story, so in that way I do think the RL play offs are wrong/stupid
However I do feel it’s hypocritical of football supporters to completely slate the system they have when we have something pretty similar ourselves & most people I know think that they’re a great idea.
As I’ve said to SDW – a league ranks teams in order of merit & a fair league will reward the good sides accordingly. As stats show more often than not in football the team who finished 3rd (or 4th) in the football league’s divisions misses out on promotion to teams who over the course of a season proved themselves to be inferior – it’s not a fair system whether it’s done for 3rd or 1st place
I know why they were introduced in football – it was to keep the season alive for most of the teams & to keep their attendances from tailing off. Sorry but they were introduced in rugby league for exactly the same reason & to try & prevent a monopolising of the top honour by one club for long stretches of time.
How many people moan in football that you can pick the league champions from 2 clubs before the season starts? Or how many latics fans used to slag rugby league off when Wigan dominated by asking “what’s the point in a sport where 1 team is so dominant?”
The RL authorities tried to address is with the play offs & they tried to address the issue of 1 club being so dominant by using it’s wealth to hoover up all the best talent by introducing the salary cap. Sometimes i wish the football authorities would try to be bold to solve similar issues in our game
Don’t get me wrong they make horrendous mistakes – the doing a way of relegation is a massive mistake as it’s killing the game at a lower level by removing the incentive to reach the top but I do understand the reasoning behind it coz the club’s were struggling to set up to the pro game & then stay up & some club’s were biting off more than they could chew money wise. I think they chose the wrong way of addressing it though
Just like they made mistakes allowing the clubs to go straight into the top flight to try & spread the game beyond the M62 corridor. New clubs built on sand will always crumble & they just don’t learn their lesson as they keep doing it Gateshead, Paris, Crusaders whilst club’s in towns that have been playing the sport for over 100 years like Leigh, Featherstone & co can just go swing.
I try not to let my intense dislike for Wigan RL cloud all my views of the sport
Like f@ck I’m splitting hairs!
Plays offs in British association football do not crown national champions: that is a simple fact.
Play offs in British Rugby League do crown national champions – and that is a the huge difference.
The fairest way of deciding who are the champions is by having every team play each other home and away, award points for wins and draws, and the team who gets the most points wins the trophy; that is what we do in this country’s football leagues.
If you then tag a knock out tournament onto the end of that, it become unfair as the outcome of a season suddenly rests on one game not the twenty or thirty that have gone before it.
Yes, I understand perfectly well why play-offs were introduced into British football, however, teams still have a way of avoiding the play-offs: play sufficiently well over the course of a season to finish in first or second. Clubs then cannot bemoan the fact that they have to enter the play-offs as they had their chance of acquiring enough points to avoid them but failed. In Rugby League they have no such opportunity, and no matter if you win the league, you’re still forced into winner-takes-all games.
You said:
‘How many people moan in football that you can pick the league champions from 2 clubs before the season starts? Or how many latics fans used to slag rugby league off when Wigan dominated by asking “what’s the point in a sport where 1 team is so dominant?”’
Correct – but at least it is a fair contest in football and was a fair contest in Rugby League. Rugby League put salary caps in place to even things out and then the play-offs were thrown in as an end of season money-spinner.
And for the record, I don’t have a dislike for Wigan RL and I don’t dislike RL as a sport – in fact, I played the sport into my early twenties.
I do however, find their play-off system unfair in that the team who is consistently the best over the course of the season has a good chance of not being crowned champions.
