1990–91 League Cup | |
---|---|
Structure | National knockout championship |
Teams | 38 |
Winners | Warrington |
Runners-up | Bradford Northern |
This was the twentieth season of the League Cup, known as the Regal Trophy for sponsorship reasons.
The final was won by Warrington, who beat Bradford Northern 12-2 in the match played at Headingley, Leeds. The attendance was 11,154 and receipts were £57662.
This season saw no changes in the entrants, no new members and no withdrawals, the number remaining at thirty-eight.
The preliminary round involved twelve clubs, to reduce the numbers to entrants to the first round proper to thirty-two.
Involved 2 matches and 4 Clubs
Involved 16 matches and 32 Clubs
Involved xx matches and xx Clubs
Involved 8 matches and 16 Clubs
Involved 4 matches with 8 clubs
Involved 2 matches and 4 Clubs
Scoring - Try = four (4) points - Goal = two (2) points - Drop goal = one (1) point
As part of the sponsorship deal and funds, the prize money awarded to the competing teams for this season is as follows :-
This tree excludes any preliminary round fixtures
1 * Bradford Dudley Hill are a Junior (amateur) club from Bradford
2 * Saddleworth Rangers are a Junior (amateur) club from Oldham
3 * Egremont are a Junior (amateur) club from Cumbria
4 * At this time Fulham were a bit nomadic, using a collection of grounds as their "home", but the likelihood was that this match was probably played at Chiswick Polytechnic Sports Ground
5 * RUGBYLEAGUEproject and Rothmans yearbook 1991-92 give the score as 6-35 but Wigan official archives gives it as 6-5, which must be a misprint as Batley were the team progressing to the next round
6 * Headingley, Leeds, is the home ground of Leeds RLFC with a capacity of 21,000. The record attendance was 40,175 for a league match between Leeds and Bradford Northern on 21 May 1947.
The council of the Rugby Football League voted to introduce a new competition, to be similar to The Football Association and Scottish Football Association's "League Cup". It was to be a similar knock-out structure to, and to be secondary to, the Challenge Cup. As this was being formulated, sports sponsorship was becoming more prevalent and as a result John Player and Sons, a division of Imperial Tobacco Company, became sponsors, and the competition never became widely known as the "League Cup"
The competition ran from 1971-72 until 1995-96 and was initially intended for the professional clubs plus the two amateur BARLA National Cup finalists. In later seasons the entries were expanded to take in other amateur and French teams. The competition was dropped due to "fixture congestion" when Rugby League became a summer sport The Rugby League season always (until the onset of "Summer Rugby" in 1996) ran from around August-time through to around May-time and this competition always took place early in the season, in the Autumn, with the final usually taking place in late January
The competition was variably known, by its sponsorship name, as the Player's No.6 Trophy (1971–1977), the John Player Trophy (1977–1983), the John Player Special Trophy (1983–1989), and the Regal Trophy in 1989.