no8 dave hoskins & no 10 london crusaders

We were champions that year dont forget.

Home League games were played at Boothferry several years in a row in the '50s. Discontinued due to the Football League adopting new regulations.

To save me digging out the DVD, who did win MOM vs Widnes in the NL GF?

The Premiership didn't become the Northern Rail at all! The 1997 season finished with FC getting dicked 18-0 by Huddersfield and that signalled the end of the Prem competition, as the following year the Play Offs were introduced. 1998 saw Wakey beat Fev in the inaugural GF at the (then) McAlpine. Wakey persuaded Super League to promote them on the back of this game (along with several ground-related promises!).

In 2002 they introduced the "Buddies" Cup as a way of padding out the fixture list. This morphed to the Arriva Trains for a couple of years and finally the Northern Rail Cup.

Didnt it? They may have been years apart and played at different times of the year but they were both designed to add an extra competition as an alternative to the league campaign and didnt offer promotion for the winners.

Isnt the current Northern Rail competition a direct descendant of the 1997 Premiership competition? Teams from different divisions playing each other in a regional format?

Charlie at fullback