It's so that they will have time to put two of the balls in the freezer.

It's just crazy, and stinks of amateurism.

Well they've done all that moaning about keeping the final free to air and they are the ones killing the competition off! Absolute joke!

Not shocked anymore.

the people running the game are a bunch of fook ups

Not surprised one iota. Competent and the RFL are two things that are not found in the same sentence.

It is BUT,
The reason in all probability is that they will be checking on ground availability for the semis and will also announce the venues at the time of the draw.

Is that One Show still going? An idea for the BBC to have done the draw on that Wednesday evening?

Ok back to reality. Done live on BBC 2 (North West and Yorkshire would probably be the ruling from the BBC) with local radio and, dare I say it, Radio 5 broadcasting it live.

Maybe.

But in all honesty the location at which the semi's will take place are a side note. All us fans care about is who were going to play next, they could announce the semi-final locations a week later for all I care.

We should be doing are best to keep the momentum of the CC competition alive for as long as possible, but we just deflate the whole thing by having the draw a few days later. And that's before we even get on to the subject for the massive gaps between rounds.

Typical rfl

That IMO is a major problem with the Challenge Cup. It'll now be two months before the semi finals are played. It becomes "the forgotten" competition.

At least one venue is already sorted, but I think they're better waiting to see what the actual draw brings before allocating venues (Batley v Bradford at Widnes wouldn't make any sense, for example)

I'm sure they try to make the game look smaller than it is.

With RU it's the other way around. Not saying that just because it's RU but they are just so good at this side of things.

Hopefully the draw will be.

Bradford v Barrow
Wigan v Batley

But in reality, id settle for

Wigan v Catalan
Saints v Warrington

As for the broadcast of it, the RFL is an embarrassment, this is no suprise.

The gaps between rounds up to this point have been okay - once every two or three weeks since the first one at Sheffield. The gap after tomorrow's game to the Semi is ridiculous, though. Totally ruins the momentum about the whole thing. Crazy that we have to wait days before the draw for the Semis if we win tomorrow, too - what justifiable reason can there be for that?

They proved that with the Round 3 draw that had to be redone. It's a joke!