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

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

Featherstone

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

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.

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?

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.

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?

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?

At various points in the game Leigh had 12 and 14 on the field. Can't see them being able to use their own ref next time. Don't think they've used him since. I'd much rather we played Leigh away than any of the SL teams away .....even if they can have their own ref. It's completely unpredictable at the moment and 2nd could turn out much the better but it's not something you can calculate.

I'm driving myself insane thinking about it! Best just forget about it at least till we're halfway through the season!

Would people rather play away to a SL team we are more likely to beat (Wakefield IMO) or a harder team we know we should lose against?