Rugby League Challenge cup final week

I believe it is the oldest knock out cup in Britain predating football. In the late 1800s and early 1900s wealthy entrepreneurs would display their wealth and give back to the community through the instigation of new sports that the Victorians were inventing. Rugby union was a public school sport, a toffs game. The joke goes if Webb Ellis had meant union he would have picked up the ball, not run with it, just kicked the ball.  Over the years the two sports grew apart. Players who went on to play league after the great schism were written out of history and stripped of their medals. For a century if a player so much as took a trial with a league team they were banned forever from playing union. Of course these players tended to be welsh mining stock who had far more in common with rugby league, the renegade game and rugby Union the establishment sport. Such an apartheid like system has not existed before or since. The union code deemed it sacrilege to play for money, but up north, the miners and ship workers could not afford to lose half a days earnings on a Saturday so wanted reimbursement for their loss. Big crowds were paying to watch the sport so why should they get beaten up an broken boned and lose there Saturday morning pay.
The great schism as it is known took place in the George hotel in Huddersfield where the northern business men who ran the teams were attracting large crowds and beating the southern teams. The schism enabled the uniom to break away and no longer be beaten by the superior northern teams and the northern union, later to be called the rugby league to pull ahead in skill. It wasn't until 1995 when a brave Bath, the best team in union played Wigan in a cross code challenge that the two codes would play again. Wigan 82 Bath 6 was the league score and bath 46 Wigan 24 unfer union rules. In truth by this point rugby league, or certainly Wigan and leeds were a professional outfit and the two sports had changed over the years. League designed to be big hitting and spectacular, Union more a game with a freer spirit where a tall lanky flanker could play alongside a short fat hooker. A gametophyte be play dates s enjoyed. Rugby league, in order to increase crowds had become more exciting, more violent, and more skilful. Union an amateur code. League a professional sport, a product to be marketed.