After watching the IPL playoffs today, it made me think that they have a cool, unique way of deciding their playoff final teams that maybe should be adopted in our playoffs to ensure a bit more fairness.
Game 1 is Team who finished 1st v team who finished 2 - winners go straight through to final, losers go to play winners of game 2 below.
Game 2 is 3 v 4 - winners go to play losers of Game 1.
Game 3 is Losers of Game 1 v winners of Game 2
Game 4 (Final) is winners of game 1 v winners of game 3.
So, essentially if you finish in the top 2 you get 2 shots at getting to the final.
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Comments
The play offs can be unfair to the third placed team, but that fairness is sacrificed to increase competition ( and allowed us to be promoted from the play offs). Sorry if I have misunderstood.
I like the idea mentioned and it probably is fairer, just like the Scottish way of 6th v 5th, then winner v 4th, then winner v 3rd is fairer too. But, I think the excitement the current system in use over here brings is too precious to throw away and don't really see a point in changing it.
Game 1: 3rd home to 4th
Game 2: 2nd home to winner of Game 1
Game 3: 1st home to winner of Game 2
I would like to see them altered to be fairer to the most succesful team. The situation where a team in the 4th playoff position can realistically be twenty points behind the team in 1st playoff position and go on to win the playoffs seems to me to be very unfair. It does of course all come down to how well teams play on the day and the system I propose does not basically change that, but does make it more likely that the higher finishing team will win through.
Team A finished 3rd in the league ( 1st playoff position) They are automatically playoff finalists.
Team B finished in second playoff position
Team C finished in third playoff position
Team D finished in fourth playoff position
D play away at C in a one-off game involving extra-time and penalties if necessary.
The winners play away at team B again in a one-off game.
The eventual winners progress to Wembley to meet team A who were automatic playoff finalists.
The positive of this system is it radically increases the chances of team A winning promotion.
The negative is this system requires less games. Though that may not actually be a bad thing?
In the Scottish championship playoff the team that finished second from the bottom in the SPL automatically makes the final.
I think they are great to be honest
The problem was that the playoffs took a couple of weeks whereby the League leaders were sitting about doing nothing while the other teams played.
Come the final the league leaders hadn't played for a couple of weeks and were off the boil and got beat by the qualifying team who had been playing for the last two weeks.
They've changed now to the top 4 playing off.
This was part of the league's two-season-long restructuring that would reduce the number of teams in the top tier (from 22 to 20) while increasing them in the lower divisions (creating three divisions of 24 clubs); during these seasons, only one club (Charlton Athletic in 1987) that entered the play-offs in a relegation place managed to win the play-offs and therefore retain their divisional status (From Wiki)
Methinks this is a better format
Mind you it could happen if only two were to be automatically relegated so that third bottom went into the mix with a possible CAFC-like get out of jail card. But then we might lose our record one day!
http://www.theguardian.com/football/that-1980s-sports-blog/2015/may/22/first-football-league-play-offs-1987-charlton-swindon-aldershot?