That's the right way forward. An alternative which the clubs might prefer would be to use the 6-team format we had from 2002-2008. Anything's better than 8 teams out of 14 getting into the playoffs.

Because it's a 4 pointer (i.e them losing is almost as important as us winning in terms of the table), and we need to get over this hoodoo we have when we play Wire. Isn't it also important for the strongest team to have experience of winning a crunch game? It's not like we have loads of chances to really test them throughout the season before the play offs

According to his blog, the Wire game is probably going to be a bit soon for Green. If we presume that Tomkins, Smith, McIlorum, Farrell are going to be back then we are looking something like:



Tomkins

Charnley

Goulding

Thornley

Richards

Powell

Smith

Lauaki

McIlorum

Mossop

Hansen

Farrell

Burke



Taylor

Crosby

Logan Tomkins

Hughes/Tuson





Fair bit of size and experience missing from that pack to play against Wire

I see Blake Green has named his newly born son Boston. That should give him God like status at wigan forever

He could have named him Marsh, Kitt, Hindley

I don't know to be honest I don't follow the Academy enough to make an informed judgement. We won the Academy Grand Final last year but Rogues would be able to say better than me what we've got coming through, if any of them are much good, or if the good ones are at other clubs.

Hindley Green has a bit of a ring to it.