The draws for the semi-finals of the AB Sundecks 1895 Cup and quarter-finals of the Betfred Women’s Challenge Cup will be held at 5pm on Wednesday.
Both take place at the Ullswater Heights leisure resort near Penrith and will be streamed live on the RFL’s Our League web and app, the AB Sundecks Facebook page and on TheSportsman.com.
The 1895 Cup for non-Super League clubs is back on the agenda, albeit on a slimmed-down scale, after being a casualty of coronavirus lockdown last year.
While the inaugural 2019 version featured 20 teams and was won by Sheffield Eagles, this season’s is made up of just four clubs because of a compacted fixture list in the Championship and League 1.
Featherstone, Swinton, Widnes and York qualified as Challenge Cup second-round winners and will contest the two ties on the same weekend as the Challenge Cup semi-finals, June 5/6.
The quartet are just one match away from a Wembley appearance, with the final being staged as part of a double-header with the Challenge Cup showpiece on Saturday, July 17.
Widnes made it to the 2019 final, losing 36-18 to Sheffield at the national stadium.
While they have been there 14 times, the other 13 in Challenge Cup Finals, seven of which they won, Featherstone made the last of their five visits in the 1983 Challenge Cup Final, in which they beat Hull 14-12.
York’s sole Wembley trip was for the 1931 Challenge Cup final, which Halifax won 22-8, while Swinton have never played there.
The Women’s Challenge Cup, which also had to be put on hold last season, started on Sunday with a new structure enforced by the pandemic, with only the ten teams from the Super League involved.
There were two first-round ties, Warrington versus Huddersfield and York versus Wakefield, with Warrington and York both going through.
The top six finishers in the 2019 Super League – Bradford, Castleford, Featherstone, St Helens, Wigan and 2019 winners Leeds – go straight to the quarter-finals.
The four ties will be played on Sunday week, May 9, with the semi-finals scheduled for Sunday, May 23, and the final for the weekend of June 5/6.
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