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Wigg'n 
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IR80 wrote:
When whomever (probably Sainta) top the league are they not SL winners?
When whomever wins the Grand Final (knock out rugby so can't really call it) are they not Grannd Final Winners.

Are they not different things?


Mate it’s the 21st year of the Super League grand final concept, surely you’ve figured it out by now.
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23/08/2014

Judder Man wrote:
You could probably think about it in another way:

Stage 1 is the regular season most of it played on an home and away basis, obviously the top team becomes the League Leaders for that stage and are rewarded for it.

Stage 2 becomes the best of the best on a knock out basis and only the top 5 best teams are allowed to compete for the Grand Final appearance, winners are Superleague Champions.

In my opinion the League Leaders should have more value because its played over 29 games, the Superleague Champions only need to win at the most 3 knockout games. But SKY seem to overvalue the 3 knockout games against the 29 regular games because they control the competition format through the RFL.


To be fair they don’t just have to win 3 games though because they need to win enough to be in the top 5 to begin with. Theirs even a potential situation where the top two could finish level on points and only separated by points difference, if 2nd place then wins the GF then they would’ve won more games over the season.

Don’t see the problem anyway as a lot of sports do it nowadays even though people carry on like it’s just us. The current Cricket World Cup they all play each once so shouldn’t just first place win outright instead of top 4 then going into SF’s? Rod Studd whines about playoffs and says it should be first past the post in SL yet bigs up the Premier League of Darts where the top 4 go in SF’s instead of just 1st place winning.
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ThePrinter wrote:
To be fair they don’t just have to win 3 games though because they need to win enough to be in the top 5 to begin with. Theirs even a potential situation where the top two could finish level on points and only separated by points difference, if 2nd place then wins the GF then they would’ve won more games over the season.

Don’t see the problem anyway as a lot of sports do it nowadays even though people carry on like it’s just us. The current Cricket World Cup they all play each once so shouldn’t just first place win outright instead of top 4 then going into SF’s? Rod Studd whines about playoffs and says it should be first past the post in SL yet bigs up the Premier League of Darts where the top 4 go in SF’s instead of just 1st place winning.

Not to mention it’s RL tradition to have a final deciding the champion rather than a straight league system.
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Someday wrote:
To be honest wining the league is the hardest thing winning the grand final does not take has many games has the league


I'm not sure that's true. Speaking with Brian McDermott his philosophy was to get his team playing well by Sept Oct and doing enough to qualify.

Saints last year blasted teams by playing the same strongest team week in week out and rightly won the league. Due to poor planning they didn't win the GF. Hes changed his approach this season that's for sure
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23/08/2014

Someday wrote:
To be honest wining the league is the hardest thing winning the grand final does not take has many games has the league


If the Grand Final isn’t as hard to win then why have only 2 teams won it in 11 of the last 12 years compared to several different LLS winners?
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ThePrinter wrote:
If the Grand Final isn’t as hard to win then why have only 2 teams won it in 11 of the last 12 years compared to several different LLS winners?


Because you are Cherry Picking why 11 out of the last 12 years to remove a further team.

Wigan-Saints-Leeds have won the LLS and Grand Final this decade, newcomers Warrington, Huddersfield and Castleford have found it very difficult to keep form right up to the end of the season. My own theory is that if a club hits league leaders spot early in the season they have a natural winning mentality to stay there whilst at the same time quite a few clubs try to raise their game to knock the leaders off their perch.

If a team puts in a lot of effort to finish top of the league its takes a lot more mental pressure to raise their game for the play offs and you really need quite a few big game experienced individuals in the team to do that.
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Judder Man wrote:
Because you are Cherry Picking why 11 out of the last 12 years to remove a further team.

Wigan-Saints-Leeds have won the LLS and Grand Final this decade, newcomers Warrington, Huddersfield and Castleford have found it very difficult to keep form right up to the end of the season. My own theory is that if a club hits league leaders spot early in the season they have a natural winning mentality to stay there whilst at the same time quite a few clubs try to raise their game to knock the leaders off their perch.

If a team puts in a lot of effort to finish top of the league its takes a lot more mental pressure to raise their game for the play offs and you really need quite a few big game experienced individuals in the team to do that.


I think that the difference is far more fundamental that you are stating.
For clubs such as Huddersfield and Castleford, who are not used to winning silverware (something that my team is still dreaming of in the SL era), they have focused on finishing top of the league, rather than winning the main prize and to some extent, perhaps thinking that finishing top was "job done".
If you compare this to the way that say Leeds and Wigan went about their business, their focus, even before the start of the regular season, was on how to reach and win the GF. Different preparation and different mentality.
Saints appear to have learnt from their "failings" of last season but, when it comes to the play offs, those that have been there before and won the GF are at a huge advantage over the newbies.
THe same also applies to the latter stages of the Challenge Cup and generally, it is the sides with recentish cup success that will win the Final, Catalan being a notable exception to that rule, although McNamara has plenty of "big game" experience, which will have helped.
Leeds, under McDermott, were excellent at peaking for the play offs but, more importantly, having the belief that they would win, something that you have to credit McDermott with.
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wrencat1873 wrote:
I think that the difference is far more fundamental that you are stating.
For clubs such as Huddersfield and Castleford, who are not used to winning silverware (something that my team is still dreaming of in the SL era), they have focused on finishing top of the league, rather than winning the main prize and to some extent, perhaps thinking that finishing top was "job done".
If you compare this to the way that say Leeds and Wigan went about their business, their focus, even before the start of the regular season, was on how to reach and win the GF. Different preparation and different mentality.
Saints appear to have learnt from their "failings" of last season but, when it comes to the play offs, those that have been there before and won the GF are at a huge advantage over the newbies.
THe same also applies to the latter stages of the Challenge Cup and generally, it is the sides with recentish cup success that will win the Final, Catalan being a notable exception to that rule, although McNamara has plenty of "big game" experience, which will have helped.
Leeds, under McDermott, were excellent at peaking for the play offs but, more importantly, having the belief that they would win, something that you have to credit McDermott with.


The mentality of Leeds + Wigan when they were a better quality side was that it didn't really matter if they had a slow start in the league because they had the players to gradually lift themselves towards the end of the season. We have the likes of Warrington and Saints who are a bit different and really want to win games week in week out which is fair enough but I think they understand thats at risk of playing stale later.

Castleford, Hull and Wakefield perhaps are the victim of a much shallower quality squad depth and have been very unlucky with injuries for quite a few seasons now. Catalans suffer from the home/away inconsistency.

Saints have learnt a bit from last year by applying rotation in the playing squad but the club still has this belief they can win everything and don't target any particular trophy, its still a gamble and could come away with nothing but it won't be from the lack of trying. I suspect Warrington are similar and I don't think they are too far away from winning a Grand Final if they can keep their pivotal players in good shape.
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23/08/2014

People go on about rotation as if that’s the key but Leeds didn’t really rotate at all even in those 2011 & 2012 when we finished 5th. If anything because we started off slowly in the first half of those seasons and were around 7th/8th we had to keep picking our strongest 17 to climb up to 5th and one of the (many) issues certain fans had against McDermott was him picking the same guys and “flogging them” and on a number of occasions not even using all his subs. In 2011 we were constantly in tight games, from what I recall Warrington hadn’t had a close games in about 10/12 games prior to that very close quality semi final we beat them in.
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Can we not just have this up as a sticky? Same thread every year although granted, a little earlier than usual.
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