1970–71 Yorkshire Cup

The 1970–71 Yorkshire Cup was the sixty-third occasion on which the Yorkshire Cup competition had been held.

Leeds won the trophy by beating Featherstone Rovers by the score of 23–7

The match was played at Odsal in the City of Bradford, now in West Yorkshire. The attendance was 6,753 and receipts were £1,879

This was Featherstone Rovers's second Yorkshire Cup final defeat in successive competitions

Background
This season there were no junior/amateur clubs taking part, no new entrants and no "leavers" and so the total of entries remained the same at sixteen.

This in turn resulted in no byes in the first round.

Competition and results
Involved 8 matches (with no byes) and 16 clubs

Round 2 - Quarter-finals
Involved 4 matches and 8 clubs

Round 3 – Semi-finals
Involved 2 matches and 4 clubs

Teams and scorers
Scoring - Try = three (3) points - Goal = two (2) points - Drop goal = two (2) points

Notes and comments
1 * Just prior to the new season's start, the Hunslet players were told they had to accept a cut in wages. This they refused to accept as they had not had a rise for eight years. They went on strike. When the management threatened to close down the club, the players relented and backed down, but after only one match they went back on strike. This match was not played and Doncaster awarded a walk-over.

2 * Odsal is the home ground of Bradford Northern from 1890 to 2010 and the current capacity is in the region of 26,000, The ground is famous for hosting the largest attendance at an English sports ground when 102,569 (it was reported that over 120,000 actually attended as several areas of boundary fencing collapse under the sheer weight of numbers) attended the replay of the Challenge Cup final on 5 May 1954 to see Halifax v Warrington

General information for those unfamiliar
The Rugby League Yorkshire Cup competition was a knock-out competition between (mainly professional) rugby league clubs from the  county of Yorkshire. The actual area was at times increased to encompass other teams from outside the  county such as Newcastle, Mansfield, Coventry, and even London (in the form of Acton & Willesden).

The Rugby League season always (until the onset of "Summer Rugby" in 1996) ran from around August-time through to around May-time and this competition always took place early in the season, in the Autumn, with the final taking place in (or just before) December (The only exception to this was when disruption of the fixture list was caused during, and immediately after, the two World Wars)