SUPER League carries on this week, albeit with the subtitle of the Super 8s, and there are still plenty who can’t come to terms with what a league programme should do.

It was simple between the years 1974-98 when everyone accepted that the first past the post system, like in football, handed the title to the best, most consistent team.

When that was changed in 1998, with the old Premiership morphing into the Grand Final a huge change took place that is now hard to row back from.

Super League and its television backers have since then had a big night under lights at the Theatre of Dreams to sit alongside the Challenge Cup’s Wembley finale.

And as an end of season showpiece it caught on pretty quickly to the extent that there would be howls if it was scrapped now – or if it went back to old Premiership and the pre-1998 order was restored.

But the problem since then has not arisen from the final, but the various systems to get to it.

For too many years with the top six and then ludicrously with the top eight play-offs the game came up with a plan that kept clubs involved who had no right to still be in with a sniff.

Any team that has lost nearly as many games as it has won doesn’t deserve to be in with a shot at the top prize at the end of the season.

And for that reason alone it was a blessing when that system was scrapped after 2014.

Those play-offs had other major weaknesses, particularly its bloated system that saw teams play pretty meaningless opening rounds which saw winners inadequately rewarded and losers insufficiently punished.

So when Super 8s was brought in, no wonder it was greeted positively.

The biggest thing it did was restore some genuine reward to week-to-week league performances, particularly as that is carried over into the second phase.

And yet those years of living under previous systems, has encouraged an argument which displays a pretty soft attitude towards teams located roughly in the fifth to ninth spots.

All of a sudden it is alien for three teams to be kicking off the second phase of the competition with little chance of progressing – cue the calls for the comp to start from scratch.

In reality Super 8s is not a second phase it is simply an extension of the league season to 30 games.

The idea that we should give a leg up to teams that have failed and kick away the legs from those who have done the hard yards from February surely goes against the nature of sport.