Rugby League has never been short of innovative ideas on how to fashion a knockout competition for clubs outside the top-flight, but sticking with one format for any length of time has proven more of a challenge.
NEVER mind Planes, Trains and Automobiles, the hit film starring Steve Martin and John Candy. As we look forward to the fifth running of the now beefed-up 1895 Cup, check out rugby league’s Tobacco, Trains, Drinks and Decking, the story of knockout competitions for clubs outside the top flight!
The plot takes us back to 1997, ten years after the blockbuster John Hughes production, which tells the story of two unlikely travelling companions who encounter a string of problems as they try to get from New York to Chicago, hit cinemas.
It’s a story both of creating additional fixtures to generate extra income for cash-strapped clubs – a familiar and recurring theme in the 13-a-side code – and providing a chance of a final appearance for the game’s lower-ranking sides, be it at Blackpool, Wembley, another neutral venue or in some instances, on their own patch.
As Time Machine has previously noted, it’s fair to say that over the years, our sport has had quite a liking for additional competitions to add a bit of extra flavour to the bread and butter of league rugby.
The Challenge Cup, of course, has been part of the calendar since 1896-97, the season after the code’s foundation, and in the ‘old days’ (between 1905-06 and 1992-93, to be precise) we had the Lancashire and Yorkshire Cups.
The arrival of floodlighting and expansion of television coverage of sport brought the BBC2 Trophy, which ran from 1965-66 until 1979-80.
And the onset of sports sponsorship was key to the creation, for the 1971-72 season, of what was to all intents and purposes, the league cup, although it sometimes included amateur and French sides and went under the name of cigarette brands, firstly Player’s, then Regal.
The arrival of Super League in 1996 sounded the death knell of the Regal Trophy, with the BBC struggling to fit it into its summer schedule and the backers unwilling to continue without television coverage.
By that time, the Challenge Cup had long had smoking sponsorship, and Silk Cut, who in 1985 succeeded State Express, also put their name to the new Plate competition in 1997.
The Plate provided extra action for those 16 clubs eliminated in the fourth round of the Challenge Cup, and had the carrot of the final being at Wembley, as a curtain-raiser to the showpiece showdown.
Hull KR, beaten at home to Halifax in the Cup, won the Plate, defeating Doncaster, Lancashire Lynx and Leigh en route to a North London clash with Hunslet, who were thumped 60-14, with Papua New Guinean halfback Stanley Gene the inspiration, before St Helens saw off Bradford 32-22 in the main event.
With the Plate failing to arouse any real interest, and therefore meaningful gate receipts, until the later stages, it was dropped after only one season.
But in came the Trans-Pennine Cup, for the eight Second Division (third tier) clubs only.
The competition provided six extra mid-season fixtures against county rivals on top of the 14 home-and-away meetings, with the Red Rose and White Rose Championship clashes counting towards the league and the leaders of the respective sections meeting in a one-off final, with the venue decided by the toss of a coin.
Batley, winners of the first two Challenge Cups, claimed both the hosting rights and the silverware, defeating Oldham 28-12 in what was their first final since losing to Huddersfield in the 1952-53 Yorkshire Cup decider, and their first trophy success since the Championship Final victory over Wigan in 1923-24.
The amalgamation of the First and Second Divisions to form the Northern Ford Premiership in 1999 meant there was no place for the Trans-Pennine Cup, but it did return in 2000, albeit as a one-off clash decided by the results of early league fixtures.
Hosts Dewsbury were 10-8 winners over Leigh, who the following year, won 36-0 at Keighley.
Having come round to the view that bigger was better, in 2002, the RFL introduced a more ambitious event – the National League Cup, which involved teams from outside the top flight playing in mini-leagues ahead of a knockout phase, with the final taking place at a neutral ground.
Four venues – Featherstone, Rochdale, Blackpool and Halifax, were used over the twelve years of a competition which had three different sponsors, soft drinks company Buddies in the inaugural season, Arriva Trains (2003 and 2004) and Northern Rail (2005 until 2013).
Surprise, surprise (it is rugby league, let’s not forget), over the years, there were various changes to the structure of the competition which was won four times by Leigh, twice apiece by Salford and Widnes, and once each by Batley, Halifax, Huddersfield and Hull KR.
In 2013, when the previous year’s winners Halifax were the hosts, there was a subsidiary Northern Rail Bowl competition, won by North Wales Crusaders at the expense of London Skolars.
League One clubs had their own competition, the iPro Cup (sponsored by a health and wellbeing drinks brand), between 2015 and 2017.
North Wales, Keighley and Barrow were the winners of the respective finals which took place as part of the Championship’s Summer Bash at Blackpool, before the introduction of the 1895 Cup in 2019, which once again took in the bulk of teams outside the top flight and provided the chance of a big-stage final appearance alongside that of the Challenge Cup.
Sheffield were the inaugural winners, beating Widnes at Wembley, only for the pandemic to force its suspension in 2020.
After three truncated versions, won by Featherstone at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in 2021, and back at Wembley, by Leigh in 2022 and Halifax last year, the fifth running of the Cup, which continues to be sponsored by AB Sundecks, will involve 21 clubs, initially split into seven groups, progressing to quarter-finals in March, semis in May and the final alongside those of the men’s and women’s Challenge Cups at Wembley in Saturday, June 8th.
First published in Rugby League World magazine, Issue 493 (February 2024)
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