IMO i believe that the current top 6 sides will stay in these positions come the seasons end,although not in these exact positions
Saints
Rhinos
Wigan
Warrington
Castleford
Huddersfield

So which finishing position do you think will reap the desired rewards for your club?

I want one of the big clubs to take the desired 5th place and see how easy it is to win from there as everyone deemed it the easy option when the Rhinos won it twice from there in 2011 and 2012

I personally believe that the GF winner will be between 3 clubs Wigan,Warrington or the Rhinos
thoughts guys.....

We do seem to play better away from home, as nice as it would be to win the LLS I'd rather us win games in the play offs. So 3rd or 4th again would do me nicely.

Top!

as we, Hudds & Leeds have recently proved, the position at the offering of the hub-cap is largely irrelevant. Yes, it's nice to have home advantage, but the week off can kill momentum in the same way as poor squad rotation can kill fitness.
You should rather be asking who's squad is the fittest, who's management have looked after their players, who's tails are up, who's got a point to prove. All of which are complete imponderables until we get to September.
You could argue that if we win our last two games against Whinos & Dire they will have a cob-on & have points to prove in the following weeks & we would be on a roll. Conversely, if Wane rests a few players & manages the rotation, we could loose those 2 & still come out of the blocks like butchers' dogs.

Off now to refresh the metaphor list (& my wine glass is empty).

realistically, it is the highest up you can get whilst keeping everyone fit.
it is better to be 8th but have a full squad available than top but burnt out

First. It wins you a trophy.

If take top but anything in the top four us fine. We are a good side away from home as pointed out though do third or fourth would be far from a disaster.

Our last couple of games are quite difficult. I can see Wane resting players in those to ensure we have the fittest squad of any going into the Play Offs. However, as we have seen this season, even with players rested we can beat anyone.

But the law of averages would suggest we might fall a few places in the final couple of rounds.

Obviously you want to finish as high as possible, but you also want to play the easiest opposition. Last season Hudds away was the easier of the 2 we could have ended up with on the final day.

Not sure we'll be looking to rest players this time. We've 14 days then 15 days either side of playing Hull KR in mid August so I think we'll be fresh as daisy's and it'll be perhaps more about getting battle hardened than resting.

I'd guess it'll be round about the time of those last two fixtures where we'll be getting Green, McIlorum and Thornley back so I think they'll be using them to get high intensity miles in those players legs before the play offs.

It's always nice to win the challenge cup but the upside of being out is that rest the squad will get.

Top. Any silverware counts, we should be going for anything that's on offer.

This is very true. The first team to win the GF outside of the top 2 were Bradford with Leeds and Saints above them. Those two teams suffered injuries to key players entering the playoffs whereas Bradford who had suffered loads of injuries during the season had all their first team back a few weeks before and so they were not only back up to speed and match fit but were pretty well rested due to having had to sit a few games out injured.

I felt they would win given the makeup of all three teams entering the playoffs and it is a big regret I didn't put a bit of money on them because back then winning it outside of the top 2 was supposed to be virtually impossible because IIRC we still had the top 5 system which supposedly made it harder for Bradford.