The chaos at the M6 Toll Road Services on the way home where ALL coaches from both teams fans stopped, was far worse than the wait at the Wembley Car Park.

The crush inside the Services was bloody unsafe and there wasn`t enough room on the car park to accommodate all the coaches trying to park there.

Idiots & alcohol , the blight of "big" RL games for me.

I go to the HJ to watch the game & catch up with my mate. Neither experience would be any the worse if there was no alcohol served in the stadium at all. And there is nothing that would get me to go Old Trafford for the GF, nothing at all.

If I had my way there would be an alcohol free zone at the HJ, for people who just go to watch the game and not get ed, lairy and think they are clever by sucking on their raspberry flavoured electronic death sticks.

Rant over.....

Our driver said before we left Wembley he would not be stopping & we set off at about half six ,up the M1 /M6 & didn't bother with toll road & we got off the coach at the HJ at 10 past 10. He did a great job.

Oh, ing vapers in rhe south stand is my bug bear this year but vapers in general baffle me.

Theres a massive difference between ppl who smoke who id say95% are respectful and blow it away from you, vapers id say 95% of vapers dont give a , and blow clouds thats 5 to 10 times bigger than an average smoke exhale out, it smells worse and takes longer to dissipate. You see clouds of this enveloping people in the south stand.

The only comment about Wembley that made me laugh this weekend was some clown on the bbc website banging on about the union final had a bigger crowd. Hmm let’s think I game mostly played in the south in a final in a southern city.

If Ratcliffe gets the tax payers to build his national stadium of the North then maybe down the line we play the Challenge Cup final there. At least helps with the expensie of not travelling to London. I get nostalgia and all that but I preferred Wilderspool over the HJ again with nostalgia sometimes you just have to move on.

P.S Grand Final to Etihad would be nice Old Trafford is a dump even playing on that pitch is dangerous

If you move the Challenge Cup final away from Wembley, then I think that will be the first step towards there not being a Challenge Cup anymore.

The Wembley tradition is a huge part of it, and if you take that away then it's the start of the slow death.

There are plenty of reasons why it is never likely to have a 90,000 full house ever again, but if you move it to a ground in the north with a smaller capacity - Anfield, Etihad, Elland Road, St James' Park being the most obvious choices - then I bet it wouldn't sell those out either. Elland Road maybe, but no chance the others.

Leave Wembley and within ten years I reckon the Cup is no more.

Up until this year, I would have agreed with you 100%, but now I have changed my mind. My whole experience around the event this year was pretty bad - and I would have said that even if we had won the match. It just seems crazy to me now, in a cost of living crisis, that thousands of people from towns in the north travel all that way down south, just to pump money into London's economy. What happened to the 'levelling up' agenda? As for tradition, yes, point taken, but traditions change. We didn't used to be called Warrington Wolves, we didn't used to have Grand Finals, but things evolve. I would miss what Wembley used to represent, years ago, but we're fooling ourselves if we think that it's still the same as it used to be.

I'm in the same boat. It was a pretty poor experience for upwards of £250 worth of expenditure for me and the family. The days of attendances requiring a 90K stadium are over and have been for 35+ years.

I'm not saying Wembley is brilliant, but the issues with it are primarily that rugby league just can't come close to filling it, rather than the ground itself.

I don't think that is going to get any better at a ground in the north, and once you take the Wembley tradition away, then before long the Cup will go altogether. Tradition is the only reason why it exists now, and there's no heritage in a downgraded final in Liverpool, Leeds or Manchester.

You could possibly try moving it around a bit and going to popular grounds like Cardiff or Murrayfield. That might see a short term boost, but in a few years time their novelty will have worn off for the clubs that regularly get there and neutrals that go regularly too, and attendances will drop just like Wembley's have.

If you want a near full house and better atmosphere then by all means move it to Elland Road, but if you're moving a final that has been played at the national stadium in London for a century to a stadium with less than half it's capacity in Leeds, then you're already more or less admitting the competition is past it's sell by date in my opinion.

As the years have past there has been a massive reduction in working men's clubs and works staff organising trips to Wembley regardless of the teams that play. There not two teams who can put the numbers required to help fill the stadium, its a sad indictment of the game now but its true people cannot afford to shell out the extortionate costs in our rip off country and its only getting worse.

Fair points. Re: sell by date it's dying on it's now though. The invention of the 1895 Cup to attempt to boost the crowd is an attempt to arrest the decline. It's a real shame but since the advent of SL / Sky / Grand Final the CC has been tinkered with and messed about with too much - dates, venues etc. Taken with the fact an SL club need only win 3 games in a row to get there (used to be 4) the magic has gone, at least for me it has.

This is before we consider the costs of getting there and the underwhelming experience once you do.

There were no other RL counter attractions in the past.

Wembley was THE big day out and lots of fans did save all year and went there on an annual pilgrimage.

Now we have the Magic Weekend, fans travelling to Catalans Dragons games (To watch their own team) and also the Grand Final.

Most people just can`t afford the money to attend those games and to go to Wembley as a neutral fan too.

I like Wembley.
I don’t like it as much as the Empire Stadium, but I go in Club Wembley, so I find the experience good.

The Grand Final is the reason the CC is diluted, not the event. Up until then, it was the ultimate prize and homage for many fans.

It still is no1 for me, and I’d swap any GF for a CC, although after last weekend, it is trying my traditionalist view.

I'd swap 2010, 2012, and 2019 for a GF win, especially that 2016 GF over Wigan for the LLS and GF double.

I think the Challenge Cup as a competition has lost a lot of it's edge, just as the domestic cups have in football. I say that as someone who has attended all seven CC finals that Wires have been in since 2009, and who has also been at Wembley to see my football team win both the FA Cup and the League Cup.

The big difference really is those finals could still sell the ground out twice over, while the CCF looks like a poor "event" with 30,000 empty seats.

There is still some magic in it. I felt it in 2009 and 2010, and I bet Leigh fans felt it last year. I'm absolutely desperate for us to win the Grand Final though and would sacrifice a lot for that. Regardless of what any "traditionalist" says either, the Grand Final is absolutely the one that matters now.