1988–89 Yorkshire Cup

The 1988–89 Yorkshire Cup was the eighty-first occasion on which the Yorkshire Cup rugby league competition was held.

Leeds won the trophy by beating the previous season's runner-up, Castleford, with a score of 33-12.

The match was played at Elland Road, Leeds, now in West Yorkshire. The attendance was 22,968 and receipts were £83,591.

This was the sixth time in an eleven-year period in which Castleford, previously only winners once (in 1977), made eight appearances in the Yorkshire Cup final, winning four and finishing runners-up on the other four occasions. It was also the second season in succession that Castleford appeared, and lost, in the final within that eleven-year period.

Background
In the 1988–89 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 eighteen.

As a result, a preliminary round was required to reduce the number of clubs entering the first round to sixteen.

Preliminary round
Involved 2 matches and 4 clubs

Round 1
Involved 5 matches (with three byes) and 13 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 = four points - Goal = two points - Drop goal = one point

The road to success
The following chart excludes any preliminary round fixtures/results

Notes and comments
1 * The first Yorkshire Cup match played by the newly renamed Huddersfield who dropped the "Barracudas"'s suffix

2 * The record score (and highest winning margin) at the time for a Yorkshire Cup match, beating the previous record win of 79-5 (1948)

3 * The receipts are given as £76,658 by the Rothmans Rugby League Yearbook of 1991-92 and 1990-91 but the details given in a section of the Huddersfield v Ryedale-York match programme for the preliminary round on Sunday 23 August 1992 (and all verified by The Rugby League Record Keepers Club), show the receipts as £83,591

General information about the Rugby League Yorkshire Cup competition
The Rugby League Yorkshire Cup competition was a knock-out competition between (mainly professional) rugby league clubs from Yorkshire. However teams were sometimes included 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 to May. This competition always took place early in the season, in Autumn, with the final taking place in (or just before) December (The only exception was when disruption of the fixture list was caused during, and immediately after, the two World Wars).