To advise this years’ Challenge Cup will take place in August – this is BOTH the semi-final and final. The semi final will take place on Saturday 1st August and the final 2 weeks later on Saturday 15th August.
There are many reasons for this – but the main ones are due to Alsop Cup games and Middleton Cup games now on separate Saturdays means there is no FREE Saturday as such, the other reasons is to avoid “peak period” and to ease the pressure on clubs in getting teams out. Also I took feedback from players, clubs last year and moving to August worked and was asked to consider this going forward. Plus it always seems to rain on the normal programmed Saturday in June!
The draw has now taken place and can be found here.
The host clubs this year will be: –
Benfield, Gosforth Garden Village, North Shields West End, Alnwick and Rothubry.
You will notice there is only 5 sections this year – this is due to the number of entries received, which is lower than previous years unfortunately.