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Message: [QUOTE="Coxy, post: 2239328, member: 1764"] It depends. Are the premiers the best team all year or the best team during the finals? Reality is we always praise the team who's best come September, not all year. Bulldogs were shit for most of 1995, but won the Grand Final. Cronulla and Parramatta were the best teams all year in 1999, but didn't make the Grand Final. Heck, Souths were the best and most consistent team all through 1991 but didn't make the Grand Final. Canterbury the same in 1993. Were the Broncos the best team in 2006? Not by a long shot. It's not about being the best team all season. All that's about is giving you the best position in the finals. St George-Illawarra and the Bulldogs both got that opportunity. Both got to play at home against teams lower on the ladder and both could not be eliminated, and both would get a week off if they won. It's not the Broncos or Eels' fault that the Dragons couldn't make the most of it. Heck, even the Titans had a good opportunity. If not for their shithouse first half against us they would've won, got the week off and be playing at Suncorp Stadium for a spot in the Grand Final this weekend. Instead they lost, had to play at a neutral venue in Sydney and failed to put it together. The Broncos, for finishing 6th, have had to play 3rd and 1st so far, and won both. They now face 4th, and will likely play 2nd in the Grand Final if they get that far. When they finished 5th in 1993, it was similar. Had to beat 4th, then had to beat 3rd, then had to beat 1st, then had to beat 2nd. The Eels have also had to play 1st and 3rd so far, and also won both. Now they face 2nd, and regardless will play a team that finished higher than them in the Grand Final if they make it. If you want to reward the best team all year, then make the Minor Premiership the MAJOR PREMIERSHIP, and consider the finals a whole new competition, a Challenge Cup, for the top 8 sides. That'd be a massive change in culture for rugby league, and it will probably never happen. People look at the AFL competition, but the reality is in their game the top 2-4 teams are usually the standouts, and the rest of the top 8 are really just making up the numbers. Plus their game inherently favours the better teams. There's not the dependence on referee decisions and player mistakes to swing a game like can happen in rugby league. And if you look back through the history of McIntyre with the NRL, the 7th or 8th teams that have managed to win games have been teams running into form at the right time. In 2000, Parramatta were hitting form coming into the finals and upset 2nd placed Roosters. In 2002 the Dragons came into the semis after a big win over eventual premiers Sydney Roosters, and then upset Newcastle (after taking out Andrew Johns). In 2004 the Cowboys had come from nowhere to make the finals on a pretty amazing run of wins, and then upset the Bulldogs. All those teams were 7th beating 2. Then in 2008 the Warriors hit form at the right time and upset Melbourne. Similarly this year the Eels had won 7 of 8 going into the finals, while the Dragons had lost 3 of their last 4. Let's think back to 2004 as well. The Broncos had lost to the Storm at home in week 1, and the Cowboys had beaten the Bulldogs in Sydney. The result was those two teams had to meet in Sydney. Broncos vs Cowboys in Sydney....before the rivalry really had taken hold and it wasn't Thurston vs Lockyer etc. To avoid a financial disaster, the Cowboys and Broncos agreed to shift the game to Townsville. That led to the recent scenario where week 2 games were "home city" finals, where the winning teams from week 1 hosted finals in week 2. Everyone applauded that. Nobody whinged about how it was "unfair" for the Broncos, who finished 3rd, to be flying to a hostile Townsville crowd to play. The ranting of Gould and others is just typical of rugby league's knee jerk reaction to what's happening right now, rather than looking back over history and seeing it's not new, it's not a new pattern of events and instead of thinking about it logically we rush to appease the masses with a poorly considered decision which very likely will result in a different whinge in a year or two's time. [/QUOTE]

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