If It Ain’t Broke……

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“The play-offs are not fair” is a statement that will always come out somewhere between the start of TV coverage on the Saturday game and the end of the coverage for Monday’s showdown. Couple that with “X team finished a whole X points ahead of Y and yet Y get promoted – that needs to be looked at surely” and you have the same discussion year on year.

Love them or hate them – the play-offs work. Since their inception in 86/87 they have proved massively popular and having been on both sides of the finish of them, I know the ecstasy and agony that the system brings yet I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Every single club knows at the start of the season what happens at the end of it. It’s not as if the football league make up the rules as they are going along now is it? It has been the same for 17 seasons now and we all know the score. The fans love them (although QPR and Lincoln fans may disagree at the moment) and so do the media. Just take a look at the column space and TV time that the play-offs have taken up in the last week and try telling us that they want to change it.

But of course the league are changing it nest season. Take the third division for example – two more teams are being allowed into the play-offs next season meaning that 9th place will result in more games after season. Sounds great doesn’t it that you can finish almost halfway down the league and still have a chance of promotion. Personally I think it sounds ridiculous. Why are we spreading the wings of the play offs to incorporate more teams when the system that is in place does everyone just fine?

All the league will succeed in doing is making a mockery of it. Why not go the whole hog and say we all play five games each and promote the best three over those five games. The rest play-off in a knockout basis until we find another team. Or better still, sod the league part, we’ll just have a cup competition between the 24 sides and the last 4 standing win promotion? Okay I am taking this a bit far but 9th place could get you promotion? Oh, come on.

I always fail to understand people’s obsession with change all the time. Things work so you leave them alone and worry more about the things that are not working like the amount of money coming outside the Premiership and into the Nationwide League. Or the problems faced by clubs because of the leech instincts of owners (mentioning no names)

Yeah sure it will extend the season and keep the interest going for longer for more clubs but most managers want no more games. It could take 49 games, three lots of extra time and three sets of penalties to get promoted next season if we were to finish 9th and clubs at this level don’t have the squads to do justice to that system.

Plus you get the sides in 4th and 5th having to wait for the other four teams to finish their games before they get back into action. I just cannot see the benefit of any of it somehow can you?

Nope I’m afraid for me it is definitely a case of ‘if it ain’t broke don’t fix it’ and this is getting more Americanised all the time. Call me old fashioned but I was happy with the last 17 years. But having said that I was against the play offs when they started and I love them now so maybe, it will grow on me.

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