Totally agree with Getsmart, Barnet v Boreham Wood should be played on the Wednesday.
Must admit, I was thinking this at the weekend - why does the third-placed team get the advantage over the second-placed team? And why does the 5th-placed team have the advantage of 24 hours more rest than the 4th-placed team before their potential semifinals?
Of course, the logical thing to do would be to play both quarterfinal games on the Tuesday night, but then BT Sport would only get to show one of them.
Completely disagree, can you imagine if that had been the case this season ? it would have been over months ago instead of which interest & therefor ***** income has been maintained for 8 or 9 clubs. As a fellow "oldie" there are many "gimmicks" that I don't agree with but the Play Offs aint 1 of them.
I understand the rationale behind play-offs. For me that does not override the principle that the top teams get promoted. The penalty of the current system is that an official's decision, or an untimely injury or tackle, allows a lesser team to go up.
May as well do away with the leagues and contrive an exciting knock out format with random draws out of the hat, bit like Russian roulette. Keep the interest and the crowds going for every game.
At least they aren't as unjust as the "test match" system in its' initial format introduced in 1893 in which the bottom 3 of tier 1 played the top 3 in tier 2.
Notts got relegated in 3rd bottom that season after losing their test match, yet Man Utd who finished rock bottom (3 wins adrift of Notts) stayed up because they won theirs. This also meant that the champions of the 2nd tier didn't go up, whilst 2nd and 3rd *were* promoted. We lost in that system 3 seasons running, eventually going back up when it was changed to a group system.
With hindsight, the modern day play offs should have been introduced in 1973/74 with the increase in promotion/relegation from 2 to 3 places, then they could have been framed as a bonus promotion spot and the sense of injustice wouldn't have been so acute. They probably would have done much to stave off the decline in gates during the late 70s and early 80s as well and - more importantly - we might have gone up before Fword.
It is a bit weird that a team can finish 30 points higher over the course of an entire season, but all that no longer counts, and instead a couple of one-off matched decide who gets promoted. Notts clearly deserve to be playing a division higher, not Boreham Wood or Bromley or whoever. We're clearly better than those teams because the table tells us so. Yet here we are.
On the flipside, I do understand that playoffs keep a sense of competition alive and make a season exciting right until the end. But in terms of pure sporting fairness and integrity, it doesn't hold up well.
I suppose everyone knows the rules to begin with, so we can't have much to complain about.
All this is true Slack. I’d like to add that Notts are so far ahead of these teams in points accrued that in theory we should be so far ahead when we play. The only thing that can stop us is the sense of entitlement and thus feeling sorry for ourselves. We finished 2nd, then is the rules. I’ve said it many times already, if we play to our potential we wipe the floor with any side in the play offs.