Steve Deane: Let's have a league finals system that lets teams exit with some dignity

The Warriors - in fact every player in the NRL - deserve the chance to go out with their boots on. Photo / Getty Images

I hated the McIntyre finals system last year and I think even less of it now.

Not because the Warriors were eliminated in the first week. They blew their chance on the Gold Coast, so stiff titty.

But the Warriors - in fact every player in the NRL - deserve the chance to go out with their boots on. Instead they went out sitting on their couches eating pretzels and drinking beer (or, more likely, chomping on a banana and washing it down with a protein shake).

Either way, after slogging through pre-season and then a 24-match regular season, that's no way to end a campaign. Surely it can't be too hard to devise a playoff system where teams know when they have won or lost a finals match just what they have won and lost?

I doubt I'm alone in saying there's no place for algebraic equations in league - but that's exactly what we have got.

For example: If team A beats team B then team A will either x) take a brief holiday on Sunshine Coast and then prepare to play the winner of C v D in either 13 or 14 days; or xi) host the loser of E v F for pre-match drinks on Thursday night, but only if xii) team G doesn't beat team H thanks to a bungled scrum, an arsey field goal and a 312th-minute intercept.

There was hardly any point speaking to the players and coaches after the Warriors match on Friday night, with reporters largely proffering questions based on what turned out to be inaccurate hypothetical scenarios.

Both teams, as it happened, thought they would be playing again this coming weekend. Neither of them are.

After slogging it out over a 24-match regular season, they deserved a better fate than playing out a finals match only to have no idea where they stood.

It's not just the Warriors who have suffered under what is a poor finals system.

Last year, the Dragons won the minor premiership but, after losing their opening match to the red-hot Eels, they were forced to travel to Brisbane in week two to face a team that finished sixth. There was no justice in that.

At least there was no injustice in the Warriors' exit. In 2008 when the eighth-placed Warriors beat the Storm, it was the sixth-placed Raiders who copped the bullet. There was a nice bit of symmetry when the seventh-placed Raiders returned the favour by beating Penrith on Saturday night.

Fate might have a way of resolving these things but the system still sucks.