Middle 8's : Wed Apr 01, 2015 4:56 pm  

Could someone explain whether the championship 4 play the SL 4 and then each other or just play the 4 SL teams?

Re: Middle 8's : Wed Apr 01, 2015 5:29 pm  

SL teams 9 & 10 and Championship teams 1& 2 all get 4 home games and 3 away



So, as it stands it would be

1] Widnes
2] Catalan
3] Leigh
4] Bradford
5] Hull FC
6] Wakefield
7] Sheffield
8] Featherstone

So our games would be Hull, Wakefield, Featherstone & Widnes at home, Catalan, Leigh and Sheffield away

Re: Middle 8's : Wed Apr 01, 2015 5:58 pm  

So the team that comes 2nd has a certain advantage over 1st. As it stands leigh would play 2 SL teams at home and 2 SL teams away while we would play 3 SL teams at home and 1 away. Would playing 1 more SL team at home instead of a champ team count as an advantage?

Re: Middle 8's : Wed Apr 01, 2015 7:04 pm  

BigHeapOfBull wrote:

So the team that comes 2nd has a certain advantage over 1st. As it stands leigh would play 2 SL teams at home and 2 SL teams away while we would play 3 SL teams at home and 1 away. Would playing 1 more SL team at home instead of a champ team count as an advantage?

With that line up of teams I'd prefer 2nd. We'd have to go to Leigh, but id rather play more sl teams at home than away. especially Hull (always a tricky place to go) and Widnes (with that pitch)

To have a realistic chance of promotion I think you'd have to assume beating the 3rd and 4th place champ teams home or away, then have to beat at least 1 possibly 2 of the sl teams and take our chances in a possibly 50/50 match with Leigh home or away. In that scenario I'd rather have 3 sl teams at odsal.

Re: Middle 8's : Thu Apr 02, 2015 6:48 am  

We would get two games that we would expect to win (Featherstone and Sheffield). Leigh would get two games that they would expect to win (Sheffield & Featherstone).

We would play what could be the decisive game at Leigh.

Doesnt that favour them?

Re: Middle 8's : Thu Apr 02, 2015 7:13 am  

Could we win promotion by just beating the championship teams if other results went our way?

If you see Leigh away as the biggest factor in promotion or not then we have no hope against the SL teams!

Re: Middle 8's : Thu Apr 02, 2015 7:43 am  

BigHeapOfBull wrote:

Could we win promotion by just beating the championship teams if other results went our way?

If you see Leigh away as the biggest factor in promotion or not then we have no hope against the SL teams!

I could see us finishing above one of the SL teams. I think the chances of us finishing above two of them are quite remote. I think if we are to gain promotion it will be through the play off final, after finishing either 4th or 5th. I could see us beating a SL team in the play off, I'm much less confident that we will finish 3rd. If they were to offer us today a guaranteed play off place and skip the Middle 8s I would take it in a nanosecond.

There may be shock results in the Middle 8s, but obviously its impossible to say today where those shocks are likely to be. As of today, the fixture list that most improves our chances of promotion is one that includes us playing Leigh at Odsal.

Re: Middle 8's : Thu Apr 02, 2015 8:06 am  

No point even thinking who we might be playing and where, as it will probably be no where near the finishing result.

The worst place to find ourselves playing away would be Catalans. All the bother of flying there and back could alone hinder the team! If the SL teams have a few missing players, do wakefield and hull kr have a squad big enough to compensate?

Re: Middle 8's : Thu Apr 02, 2015 8:40 am  

as there are superleague clubs involved there should also be superleague referees involved in the super8s. In which case I am not bothered about playing Leigh anywhere as we will be playing 12 men instead of the 14 last time.

Re: Middle 8's : Thu Apr 02, 2015 9:56 am  

martinwildbull wrote:

as there are superleague clubs involved there should also be superleague referees involved in the super8s. In which case I am not bothered about playing Leigh anywhere as we will be playing 12 men instead of the 14 last time.

12? You mean the ref will switch sides to us?