First Rugby League Challenge Cup ball

The first Rugby League Challenge Cup final was played two years after the split from the Rugby Football Union in 1895This ball is generally considered to be the one used in the first Rugby League Challenge cup final, won by Batley, 1897. The League - then known as the "Northern Rugby Football Union" - had split from the RFU in 1895, at a meeting in Huddersfield.

The split had a number of causes but chief among them was the RFU's insistence on the amateur principle (preventing "broken time payments" to players who had taken time off work to play rugby. Northern teams typically had more working class players - for example, coal miners and mill workers - who could not afford to play without this compensation). Exactly a hundred years later, in 1995, the RFU allowed (legal) payments to players - "shamateurism" had been a murky feature of the game in some areas - and the Union version of the game is now professional at the top level.

The first Challenge Cup final was played at Headingley (Leeds) and Batley beat St Helens 10 - 3 in front of a crowd of 13,492.

The first Rugby League Challenge Cup final was played two years after the split from the Rugby Football Union in 1895