You just have to trust those who know when you hear that one team or another is a "mathematical" chance of making the finals. The Dragons are currently in that boat.

They've lost their last six in a row, won just four of their last 17, and haven't beaten a team in the top eight since round five.

Yet, with two weeks to play in the regular season, with a record of 8-14, they're still just one win outside the top eight. They've been in the eight for 16 of 22 weeks.

It's been termed "resilience," largely from within the Dragons camp, but is it really just symptomatic of a finals system that rewards mediocrity?

This isn't a Dragons smackdown piece. Any club and coach would struggle to deal with all the blows (though largely self-inflicted) the Dragons have this year.

Still, the fact they remain within reach of the finals with that record doesn't say much about where the bar is set. A look at the rungs above them hardly presents a 2021 honour roll either.

The Knights are currently in seventh spot at 11-11 with a -131 differential. Below them, the Sharks, Titans and Raiders are all 9-13. The next rung down has the Warriors, Dragons and Tigers at 8-14.

The old McIntyre-eight finals system was so flawed it was rightly abandoned long ago. However, it was fair in its treatment of teams seven and eight.

All seventh or eighth 'earned' was a week-one swing at one of the competition's best two teams that hardly ever landed (though spectacularly when it did).

Under the current system, if the competition ended today, the Knights would face fading Parramatta in week one. An upset could reasonably occur and then - boom - the Knights are in week two of the finals.

They may get flogged, but they were no hope of that mid-season, what a year, lets extend Adam O'Brien for five years.

It sounds silly, but it's what happens.

It seems harmless enough, a team coming in off a low season getting a puncher's chance. That'd be fine if the top-eight system didn't create such a false economy more broadly.

How often have you heard a long-suffering fan of any battling club bemoan the fact his team might actually make the finals and they'll "have to keep the coach."

It reveals the the folly in measuring success or failure through a system that mandates half the teams in the competition make the finals each year.

Simply 'making the finals' rarely provides any real insight into how a particular season has gone, but coaches live and die by it.

A system designed to keep teams artificially in the finals race for longer periods of the season, regardless of actual performance, will always see coaches make different choices.

You can't tell me the Dragons immovable position in that rolling top eight peloton hasn't played into Anthony Griffin's weekly decision-making on, say, Matt Dufty or Corey Norman.

You only need to look at the Bulldogs to see the benefits of being free of the top-eight rat race. Yes, they've been abysmal, but look at the recruitment moves they've made after eschewing immediate top eight aspirations.

There's certainly more optimism around Belmore than there is among Tigers fans at the moment. The poor Tigers faithful have watched their club go about things the same away year in, year out in a desperate effort to get over a hump that isn't actually a hump at all.

Broadcasters own the game, they want as many games as possible and fear interest dropping off as teams fall out of finals contention. Rusted-ons still push for the fairness of a top-five finals series.

There has to be a middle ground.

People have blamed the faster ruck and the rule-changes for widening the gap between the best and the rest. It's a tiresome argument.

In reality, the gap has always been there, rule changes have simply ripped the curtain away. It might be about time the NRL did the same to the top eight finals system.