Championship to adopt Super League play-off format for 2021 season

The top six finishers in the 2021 Championship will battle it out for a place in next year's Super League, with the promotion play-offs being shown live on Sky Sports.

The second tier has adopted the same play-off system used in Super League for the coming season, which gets underway over the Easter weekend with two matches on Good Friday.

Play-off matches will take place over a three-week period, starting on September 22 and concluding on October 10 with the Million Pound Game.

Clubs had already agreed this year's Championship would be decided by points percentage to allow for the possibility of teams being forced to withdraw from fixtures due to Covid-19.

There is also the requirement that teams must have played a minimum of 70 per cent - 16 from a total of 22 - of their fixtures to be eligible for the play-offs.

However, the bottom two sides in the 14-team competition will be relegated to League One irrespective of how many matches they have played.

The team which finishes top of the 10-team League One will be promoted directly to the Championship for 2022, with the sides placed second to sixth entering a five-team play-off - provided they meet the requirement of having played a minimum of 70 per cent of their games too.

There will be no golden point extra-time for drawn games in either the Championship or League One this year either due to a desire to remove the demands on players due to many going a year without playing.

Meanwhile, an announcement will be made on Toulouse Olympique - who are due to kick off the season away to York City Knights on Saturday, April 3 - and their upcoming matches.

"There are specific challenges around the involvement of Toulouse Olympique in the Betfred Championship following the latest changes around quarantine for elite sports teams returning to the UK from France," the RFL said in a statement.

"An announcement about the impact on Toulouse's early-season fixtures will be made in the coming days."