1979–80 John Player Trophy

This was the ninth season for the League Cup, known as the John Player Trophy for sponsorship reasons.

Bradford Northern won the trophy, beating Widnes 6–0 in the final. The match was played at Headingley, Leeds, West Yorkshire. The attendance was 9,909 and receipts were £11560.

Background
The council of the Rugby Football League voted to introduce a new competition, to be similar to The Football Association and Scottish Football Association's "League Cup". It was to be a similar knock-out structure to, and to be secondary to, the Challenge Cup. As this was being formulated, sports sponsorship was becoming more prevalent and as a result John Player and Sons, a division of Imperial Tobacco Company, became sponsors, and the competition never became widely known as the "League Cup."

The competition ran from 1971–72 until 1995–96 and was initially intended for the professional clubs plus the two amateur BARLA National Cup finalists. In later seasons the entries were expanded to take in other amateur and French teams. The competition was dropped due to "fixture congestion" when Rugby League became a summer sport 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 usually taking place in late January.

The competition was known by its sponsorship name, as the Player's No.6 Trophy (1971–1977), the John Player Trophy (1977–1983), the John Player Special Trophy (1983–1989), and the Regal Trophy in 1989.

The 1979–80 season saw no changes in the entrants, no new members and no withdrawals, the number remaining at eighteen. There were no drawn matches in the competition.

Round 1 – First Round
Involved 16 matches and 32 clubs

Round 2 – Second Round
Involved 8 matches and 16 clubs

Round 3 -Quarter-finals
Involved 4 matches with 8 clubs

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

Final
The final was originally scheduled to take place on 1 December 1979, but was postponed because of a BBC TV dispute. The game was rescheduled, but due to a frozen pitch at the original venue, Station Road, Swinton, the fixture was moved to Headingley in Leeds.

Teams and scorers
Scoring – Try = three points – Goal = two points – Drop goal = one point

Prize money
As part of the sponsorship deal and funds, the prize money awarded to the competing teams for this season was as follows:

The road to success
This tree excludes any preliminary round fixtures

Notes and comments
1 * West Hull are a Junior (amateur) club from Hull

2 * Warrington official website and Wigan official archives shows the match played at Wilderspool but RUGBYLEAGUEproject shows Huyton at home

3 * Pilkington Recs are a Junior (amateur) club from St Helens, home ground was City Road until they moved to Ruskin Drive from 2011–12

4 * Wigan official archives give the attendance as 6,500 but RUGBYLEAGUEproject gives it as 6,707

5 * Wigan official archives gives the score as 21–10, but RUGBYLEAGUEproject gives it as 24–10

6 * Warrington official website shows the match played on 2 October but RUGBYLEAGUEproject and Wigan official archives show it played on 20 October

7 * Wigan official archives show Salford at home, but RUGBYLEAGUEproject show Widnes at home

8 * Headingley, Leeds, is the home ground of Leeds RLFC with a capacity of 21,000. The record attendance was 40,175 for a league match between Leeds and Bradford Northern on 21 May 1947.