3 home games against championship is easier chance of the points. But I'd hope we would be capable of getting points from the other championship teams away as well. It's going to be tougher getting wins against the SL teams so think it's better to have the home advantage against them. We're going to have to realistically have to beat two SL teams to go up anyway so better to have advantage against them IMO.

I think doing what's best for promotion is far more important than winning the division and infinitely more important than regarding every early season game as a 'must win'. There may well be occasions where it's in the side's long term interest to give squad players some game time, or allow others to recover properly, rather than always trying to put out the best available 17. We have a big squad and we'll need to keep it both physically and match fit. To be fair, there are lots of the new players we've not yet seen but I'm sure they're not going to let us down.

Looking at it dispassionately before a pass is dropped, I think this is right. We MUST beat all the Championship sides or all further discussion is pointless - PLUS (probably) 2 SL sides, either in the regular rounds or the Million pound game. On the basis that we probably won't beat the SL sides in 9th and 10th it stands to reason that the best chance of getting promoted is if we play SL 11th and 12th at home.

Great to see the powers that be have introduced such an easy to follow system.

If you are devising a method to offer the cosmetic hope of promotion merely to shut up everyone who bleated about the closed-shop, then you aren't going to make it easy to understand.

If it were more transparent about the forlorn hope of being promoted, the championship clubs would realise they'd been duped.

I know I'm off message but on the balance of probabilities I'd say we won't be promoted. But I wonder how many years of no promotion need to take place before the RFL have to admit they've undertaken #788,434 in their list of ballsups.

Well the exciting new league format has certainly got the fans flocking to Salford and Hull......oh wait.

There's no doubt that the whole system was set up to preserve the status quo - it's just so obvious. Without doubt the only chance to get promoted under this scheme is with us and London - and that only by using what experience we retain from SL, but it's still configured to give a big advantage to the incumbents and of course, that 'advantage' disappears after the end of the season.

I've said before that our best/only real chance of getting back into SL is to wait until either licensing or 'proper P&R' is brought back in. I'm sure it won't be long before all those fans who never stood a chance before, suddenly realise they still don't stand a chance and kick up a fuss...

agreed that the 6 home points are just the starting point for team 3, however theres also the SL 11th placed team at home to have a go at and therefore on your assumption a better chance of points and the 12th placed away, which could be the crucial game as I see 10 points as you do as third place. So even then theres two more chances, theoretically all you need is three wins to be in the 1m game for fifth place to play fourth. As these are essentially cup games, the timing of when you play the SL teams is going to be a factor too, anybody got a link to when the matches will actually be played? Playing that 12th placed SL team away would be best done as the first game for the top championship side imo, hit them hard straight off.

Swings and roundabouts really Martin. Finishing second you get both the worst placed SL teams at home which theoretically gives us best chance of taking the points.
At end of day until we see actual fixtures and state teams are in with regard to injuries then it's a bit pointless trying to decide whether it's better finishing 1st or 2nd, and also a bit presumptuous. We've got a largely new team as have London. Until we get some pre-season games under our belts it's hard to predict how we'll go next year. We should certainly be aiming to finish in top two but a top four finish certainly isn't guaranteed.

Obviously there's no guarantees, but we really would have to have a bit of a meltdown to finish outside the Top 4

It would mean two semi-pro teams finishing ahead of us over a 23 game season. That shouldn't and must not be allowed to happen.