Anyone still think the Super 8s are a dumb idea? As we enter the 30th and final week of the irregular season, it could hardly be any tighter. Third-placed Hull FC are just two points clear of Wigan in fifth, with Wakefield another point behind. St Helens should do their bit by winning at Salford on Thursday and their handsome points difference would secure them a play-off place regardless of whether Hull win at Castleford on Friday or Wigan win at Wakefield on Saturday.

If Saints slip up, Wakefield are suddenly back in the picture, making Saturday afternoon’s clash a win-or-bust for both them and Wigan. If Salford, Cas and Wakefield all win, third to seventh would be separated by three points after 30 games. That is astonishing. It would also mean Wakefield snatching the fourth semi-final berth and Saints and Wigan both wondering what on earth just happened.

We are surely seeing parity on the field and the salary cap working at last spreading the playing talent throughout. Whether that equates to anyone other than Leeds or Wigan winning the damn thing remains to be seen. Whatever happens over the next fortnight, we know that the tide, if it hasn’t actually turned, is at least spread across a wider bay, lapping at the feet of everyone in the top flight. Anything is possible.

2017 is not only the year in which Castleford finished top of the table for the first time in their history but Wakefield and Salford are also fielding as good a team as this generation has ever seen. They may have lost out on a semi-final place on an agonising Thursday night, but Trinity could still finish as high as they have since coming fourth in 1980-81 (their other highest finishes are fifth in 2009 and sixth in 2004 and 1992). Salford may not match the fifth place in 2006 or even sixth in 1997 but you have to go back as far as 1980 to find the Red Devils any higher than that.

We have now had six different League Leaders in the past six years – that’s Minor Premiers, Aussie friends – but Leeds, Wigan and Saints have hoovered up every Super League crown, since Bradford fell off their perch, and only Warrington have broken that triumvirate’s Grand Final lockdown in the last decade. In the same period, eight different clubs have been to the Challenge Cup final, which shows there is an evening out of the field yet the elite still make it through the most arduous test to get their hands on the trophies.

The Qualifiers have been equally awesome and a replica of last year. Warrington have continued their Leeds impression from start to finish (while looking sufficiently unconvincing for Tony Smith to decide he’s had enough), promoted Hull KR have replicated Leigh’s tremendous effort from the off, Halifax are this year’s Batley, and both London and Featherstone are suffering deja vu.

That leaves Leigh as this year’s Salford, already guaranteed to be in the play-off final (I can’t bring myself to call it by Nigel Wood’s belittling, tacky MPG name) where they await the losers of Catalans v Widnes next Saturday, a repeat of last year’s Hull KR v Huddersfield last day drama. Two will survive, one will drop. So who will be in tears on 30 October?

Widnes seem to be paying the price for not investing in experience; Leigh are still capable of accomplishing their original survival mission; and Catalans surely have too much class hidden away beneath the shambolic, directionless bluster we have seen over and over this late summer.

If results had gone differently last weekend, the Qualifiers would have been even more dramatic than Super League, with third down to sixth separated by a single point. Instead, Leigh could end up staging the MPG if they stuff London in Ealing on Friday night and Widnes lose convincingly in Perpignan on Saturday, as the points differential between the two Lancashire clubs is a mere 28 at present.

Fans are increasingly liking the Qualifiers but not the Super 8s. A little tinkering could improve both: perhaps four groups of six to reduce the play-offs to a five-game programme, or even just the bottom two in Super League playing the top two in the Championship?

Castleford hold off Wigan after Jake Trueman hat-trick puts them on course Read more

Whatever the format, the play-offs are far more fun for the neutrals than those involved. Every win takes the victors closer to their goal but doubles the potential pain when their dreams crash and burn. Whoever wins in Perpignan on Saturday night, the agony will be over. If Widnes lose, that facial hair will keep on itching for another week. Thankfully, most of us can sit back and enjoy two thrilling finales.

Clubcall: Castleford Tigers

Regards to the reader who dug out my blog from three and a half years ago, when I predicted: “Castleford fans can expect Old Trafford glory and their first ever championship title in 2017, but only after three years near the top.”

That was based on a rather labyrinthine set of data that looked at where champions had spent the previous few seasons building up to their triumph. Basically, they usually have to be there or thereabouts for three years before winning Super League. Cas have been and are now poised to end their near-century wait for a title. Reeling from the cruel loss of possible Man of Steel Luke Gale to appendicitis, Cas went and won at Wigan on Sunday with Gale’s teenager replacement Jacob Trueman scoring a first-half hat-trick. Cas will be desperate not to follow Huddersfield and Warrington in winning the hubcap but not the big ’un at Old Trafford.

If he does lead them out at the Theatre of Dreams, I hope Cas coach Daryl Powell – top of the RFL’s list for Great Britain coach in 2019, I am told – approaches it in the same maverick manner in which he did Belle Vue’s smoking ban, ambling on to the pitch during the warm up puffing on a crafty, but barely concealed, fag!

Foreign quota

More reminders from down under that the NRL do not get everything right. For their Finals series, they put a ban on “suburban” grounds hosting games. Hence, in the first round, Manly and Cronulla had to move their home games from Brookvale Oval and Toyota Park (or whatever it’s called this week) respectively to Allianz – aka the Sydney Football Stadium. They both lost, narrowly. Meanwhile, the two teams allowed to play at home, Melbourne and Allianz tenants the Roosters, both won. If the Roosters had been drawn to play Manly away, they would have ended up playing at home instead. Scandalous.

This is akin to the RFL making Castleford play their “home” semi-final at the KCom Stadium and Wakefield move their Super 8s games from Belle Vue to Elland Road. At least Manly and Cronulla were forced to move. Despite having two perfectly good home grounds, the Dragons moved their final league game to the Olympic Stadium. They lost and blew a play-off place. Serves them right.

Goal-line drop-out

Talking of unwanted accolades, the RFL hierarchy have achieved something twice in the past four seasons that had only been done twice before since the second world war: they have failed to stage a home international in a calendar year! Six weeks out from the World Cup, most sports would put on a farewell friendly so fans could wave off their national team (as happened before the last World Cup down under in 2008). Not rugby league. With next year’s mid-season test in New Zealand, England fans will go 23 months without a home game. This also happened after the 2013 World Cup, when the RFL made the mindboggling decision not to capitalise on that feelgood factor by staging any England internationals in 2014!

Some research reveals that this had only previously happened twice in 75 years: in 1958 and 1976. Granted, seasons ran from September to May then and France came over early in one season and late in the next, so there was no home England or Great Britain game in 1958. And in 1976 our top players were recovering from playing a record 12 internationals the previous year! The RFL managed to host home internationals during the war (1943-45) but didn’t bother when half the team and the coach are based in Australia. After all, it’s not as if internationals snaffle up newspaper inches, TV and radio headlines, TV audiences, ticket sales and sponsors…

Fifth and last

Thanks to my colleague Gareth Walker of Rugby League World and the Mirror for pointing out that the officious but kind-hearted senior teacher in the wonderful Educating Greater Manchester on Channel 4 is none other than former Warrington stalwart Gary Chambers. Used to bawling at uncooperative young men and despairing at underachievers, Chambers spent 13 years at Wilderspool, the last five of them in Super League, before moving into education, teaching Maths at Harrop Fold School in Little Hulton (infamous for giving us Shaun Ryder). Chambers was a talented enough coach to take charge of Warrington Under-21s, Swinton Lions, England Academy and his native Cumbria. Listen carefully and you can still hear the inflection of his native Workington in his Mersey-mangled accent. Put it this way, I wouldn’t mess with him.

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