With just one round of action remaining in the top two tiers, the shape of both the Super 8s and the Qualifiers is all but clear.
Huddersfield’s win over Leigh on Friday ensured they would be the eighth and final team competing for a place in the Grand Final, which subsequently confirmed the four top-tier teams would be in the Qualifiers.
Meanwhile, we still don’t quite know the makeup of the Qualifiers, with Halifax and Toulouse battling to be the fourth and final Championship representative.
Halifax are in the driving seat, with Toulouse needing to defeat Featherstone and then having to hope Fax lose at home to Hull Kingston Rovers on Sunday.
However, with just one round of action to go, we decided to take a look at how the Super 8s fixture lists will look if the league tables remain as they are currently.
The RFL have finally disclosed how the fixture layouts for this year, with some tidy visuals on how the fixtures currently look.
Of course, the fixtures for the top eight could change drastically. Salford and Wakefield could finish anywhere between third and fifth, Hull could finishing anywhere between third and sixth while Saints could fall as low as eighth. Huddersfield and Wigan are also not certain of their final positions either.
Nevertheless, here is how the fixtures would currently look.
The Qualifiers, meanwhile, is slightly easier to predict. Four of the clubs, Warrington, Catalans, Hull Kingston Rovers and London, are all certain to finish in the positions they currently occupy.
The only variables still in question are who finishes 11th and 12th between Widnes and Leigh, but the big one, of course, is who out of Halifax and Toulouse will be in the eight.
Halifax could feasibly finish third still, but importantly we know who will have four home games, and who will have three.
The Championship Shield, like the Super League Super 8s, could have a completely different outlook in a week’s time.
The only certainty now is that Bradford will be the bottom ranked side. Other than that, we know one of Halifax or Toulouse will be the highest-ranked, but that’s as far as it goes.
