The Challenge Cup dilemma
The Challenge Cup draw seemed to go very well last Monday night in Goole, with the new Vikings club hosting the event and taking the trophy around town to show it off to schools and various community groups.
The draw went smoothly with Scott Taylor and Max Jowitt conducting the first-round draw and Mikey Lewis replacing Scott for the second-round draw.
To watch the draw you had to go to the BBC Rugby League website to see the draw being introduced by Tanya Arnold.
It was reminiscent of the days when the Challenge Cup draw used to be made on a Monday evening and broadcast on the BBC Look North programme across the north of England.
If only we could see the Challenge Cup draw return to that degree of prominence!
The thing that worries me about the Cup draw, however, is that there are certain to be four community clubs going through to the third-round draw, potentially to be drawn against Super League clubs.
I wonder how wise that is.
We are likely to get some very one-sided matches and, at a time when the safety of players is under the microscope, allowing amateur players to take to the field against full-time professionals could lead to serious injuries.
There is undoubtedly a great romance attached to the Challenge Cup in allowing us to see matches that wouldn’t happen in any other context.
But the thought of a bunch of lads from Eastern Rhinos, based in Colchester, being drawn against Wigan in the third round hardly bears thinking about.
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