History - First Challenge Cup - First Challenge Cup Final

The first Challenge Cup Final took place on 24 April 1897 at Headingley, in front of 13,492 people, by no means a sell-out on a ground that could accommodate 20,000 at a pinch. On a beautiful but unseasonably cold day, Batley appeared in spotlessly white shirts, St Helens in a motley collection of faded blue and white hoops, which had been worn throughout the competition and had therefore come to mean good luck, both to the players and to the two excursion trains full of supporters who had travelled from West Lancashire to Leeds. The teams were

St Helens had a breeze behind them in the first half, but it was the Batley forwards who took the initiative from the kick-off with aggressive rushes downfield and a complete command of the scrummaging, which caused a nervous Saints defence to make early mistakes. After a long Batley dribble had taken their pack to the line there was a scrum, and from it their fly-half Oakland dropped a goal from a sharp angle (the only time such a score meant four points in a Cup Final: it is said that a young spectator fell out of a tree at the excitement of it). Saints rallied, yet failed to make the best of openings, their halfback O'Hara missing with both a penalty goal and a drop. To rub it in, Batley's captain, John Goodall, though just possibly offside, gathered a cross-kick and went over for the easiest of tries to give his side a 7-0 half-time lead.

Saints, in fact, played better against the wind and scored from what was to be the best movement of the match. It began near their own line, and involved two busted tackles and a dummy before a final pass was flung to the centre David Traynor, who raced half the length of the touchline before beating four men to ground near the posts: but the kick was miserably wide and St Helens lost heart after that, rarely getting play out of their own 25, and conceding another try when the Batley forward Munns scrambled over in the corner near the end, to make the final score 10-3 to the Yorkshiremen. They went home that night to the sound of 160 celebratory fog signals detonating one after another on the railway line as their train passed over them. On arrival, they were escorted by Batley Old Band to the town hall, to be hailed there yet again as The Gallant Youths, the name someone had thought up during a Batley run of success in the Yorkshire Cup years before in the 1880s.