The Betfred Challenge Cup provided us with some great rugby, wonderful tries, genuine drama and thrilling entertainment over the weekend.
It was such a shame that the attendances for the eight matches were so modest.
The Rugby Football League still hasn’t managed to find a way to encourage fans to turn out in the numbers that used to characterise the Challenge Cup in those days of long ago.
For example, there looked to be a crowd of around 4,000 at Whitehaven on Saturday for the rare visit of St Helens, but in 1960 Haven had a crowd of 18,650 for the third-round visit to the Recreation Ground of Wakefield Trinity.
Those were the days when Challenge Cup crowds would often double or treble run-of-the-mill league matches, but clearly that tendency has been reversed.
The main factor lying behind the lower Challenge Cup crowds that is often cited is the fact that fans can’t have access to matches with their normal season tickets.
But that is a symptom rather than a cause.
I think the problem is perhaps a little more profound than that.
For much of its history Rugby League was played by 30 clubs in one competition, with one league table. There was no such thing as promotion and relegation.
We moved to two divisions for two seasons from 1962/63 in the old days of winter Rugby League, but the experiment was so disastrous that from 1964/5 the game reverted to having one division.
But then the RFL tried again, moving to two divisions in 1973/4, and this time it has stuck in its various forms until the present day.
And unfortunately what that means is that the league system became far more important for all the clubs. The need to retain its place in the elite competition, whether in the Super League era or in the years before it, became the paramount consideration.
And there is now such a wide gap between clubs at different levels of the game that shock results are vanishingly rare.
There were five of the better Championship clubs contesting the sixth round of the Challenge Cup at the weekend, but realistically it was impossible to imagine any of them winning, despite good performances from Featherstone and Leigh in particular.
But again, going back to my earlier theme, I’m quite sure that both those clubs would gladly sacrifice their hopes of making progress in the Challenge Cup if they could be confident of gaining promotion to Super League.
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