If the Rugby Football League are not already holding a review into the structure of Super League then they should be.

It is hard to see how the RFL could ignore the situation after the Super 8s and Middle 8s set-up took another hammering.

Only two years in existence, the format that sees the Super League split for the final sevens matches of the season does not appear to be winning any friends – just more and more enemies.

In the inaugural season the Middle 8s finale – the so-called ‘Million Pound Game’ – drew strong criticism from both Wakefield Trinity and Bradford Bulls, the two clubs involved in the sudden-death showdown to earn or retain Super League status.

The 2016 Middle 8s were greeted with brickbats long before anyone got anywhere near the ‘Million Pound Game’.

It is understandable that Hull KR, relegated as they lost the decider to Salford Red Devils by an extra time drop goal, were hyper-critical of the system, but those who beat them were equally as unhappy with the process.

And the Huddersfield Giants camp have been equally as eager to question the value of the shape of the competition as their top flight status hung by a thread until the dramatic 23-22 win at the Robins.

I have a great deal of sympathy with Terry Campese who questioned why it was not just the bottom team in Super League – in this instance the Giants – who were relegated.

The Robins playmaker puts a very straight-forward case, but his idea does not sit well with the RFL’s compulsion with trying to manufacture end of season drama so that most clubs have something to play for – thus keeping attendances as high as possible throughout the campaign.

But the Super 8s-Middle 8s divide doesn’t really achieve this.

The Middle 8s probably succeed in maintaining the drama longer, but while Championship qualifiers for the Middle 8s Batley Bulldogs and Featherstone

Rovers did enjoy a couple of money-spinning fixtures, which is clearly a good thing for the financial health of those clubs, they did not ever look like competing against the six other clubs in the mix.

As for the Super 8s they were probably as far away from providing drama for everyone until the end as they could get this season.

There were plenty of good matches as table-toppers Warrington, eventual Grand Final winners Wigan, Challenge Cup winners Hull FC and St Helens jockeyed for position in the top four, but for the likes of eighth in the table Wakefield it was all meaningless.

Trinity’s part in the drama was over with the end of the regular Super League season.

To nick a phrase, they were ‘on the beach’ for the Super 8s games and had they turned up for those matches in surfer shorts and flip-flops it wouldn’t have hampered their chances of competing because they were never going to reach the top four.

Wakefield had achieved their goal for the season by avoiding the Middle 8s.

While the RFL will argue that all the clubs involved knew what the format was before they started out, it is not until you have been involved in those crucial

Middle 8 games that you get a feel for the kind of drama they provide.

The last round Middle 8s match between the Giants and the Robins left me drained – and I was only there as a reporter, I’ll never know how it felt for the fans of both clubs.

In post-match interviews it was clear the players hated the experience and I could feel why – it might have been very dramatic but at no step of the way could it be construed as having been fun!

I can understand the RFL wanting to try and make their product more exciting, while enduring for the length of the season, but I feel that a lot of those involved in the game would prefer a couple of meaningless matches at the close of a season as opposed to what they were put through.

What was so wrong with a straight promotion and relegation format with bigger divisions?

And while we are at it could there be a little bit more kudos given to the trophy for the team who end the season top of Super League – they have after all proven themsleves to be the best over the marathon rather than the sprint.

It is good to know that Diego Maradona is refusing to retire the ‘Hand Of God’.

The 55-year-old marked another appearance in the Pope’s annual ‘Match For Peace’ with an on-pitch row having stoked the fires pre-match by branding Inter Milan’s striker Mauro Icardi a ‘traitor’.

The former Argentina star apparently deplored Icardi’s presence in the match due to the 23-year-old’s reported affair with a teammate’s wife.

Diego Armando Maradona

Maradona suggested that Icardi should be ‘punched in the face’ – opening up the possibility that the same fist that beat Peter Shilton to the ball in Mexico 1986 could be put to use once again.

Maradona pledged before the inaugural manifestation of the Vatican backed match in 2014 that: “In me the Pope has a soldier, an ally – I will fight by his side.”

Just which part of the concept of a ‘Match For Peace’ attracted Maradona to play in the fixtures remains unclear.