Pete Barrow Column: Challenge Cup final scores, the Wembley pitch and cheating

Aug 28 2009 by Peter Barrow, Huddersfield Daily Examiner

TOMORROW promises to serve up a rugby league classic for every fan of the game – except those from the towns of Huddersfield and Warrington.

The Carnegie Challenge Cup final at Wembley sees a showdown without any of the so-called ‘big’ teams and a contest between two sides who have both shown drastic improvements over this season – admittedly in contrasting manners.

Huddersfield have blown hot in the main and becoming a permanent fixture in Super League’s top four this term is testimony to the superb work done by head coach Nathan Brown, his backroom staff and the boys out on the field.

Warrington were looking virtually terminal until former Giants coach Tony Smith stepped up and took the reins and, while a play-off place is slowly slipping from their grasp, the fact they have reached the final is just reward for their attacking attitude to the game.

I will make only two predictions going into the final – Huddersfield’s first since 1962 while Wire’s last visit was in 1990 – the first of them being that the points margin will be minimal.

There are two scenarios for this.

If the Wolves pile up the points early on and force the Giants out of their shell then it could be a try-fest where one touchdown could tip the balance for either side.

However, if the Giants take the same kind of control they did in beating holders St Helens in the semi-final then there is every chance their defence will be able to deny Warrington sufficiently to edge them over the winning line.

My second prediction will stand in the case of either of those two match scenarios.

While the neutrals lick their lips at the spectacle of two well-matched teams slugging it out toe-to-toe, I predict the fans of the Giants and Wolves will be battling with rising blood pressure, desperately trying to find a remnant of fingernail to chew and risking a follicle nightmare as hair is pulled out.

In fact I reckon there is a very strong chance that in living rooms in West Yorkshire and Cheshire there will be grown men who had settled down on the settee at kick-off confidently clutching a 12-pack of beer who finish the game having regressed to the age of six, going into ‘Doctor Who’ mode and watching the final 20 minutes of the game from behind said sofa.

Even the players think it is going to be close.

At the pre-Wembley press conference, where almost uniquely the two teams met the media together, Warrington’s famed Jekyll and Hyde half back Lee Briers – who over his career has shown a stunning ability to be awesome and then awful in equal measure – noted that: “Even the bookies can’t split us.”

Any bookmakers at that Manchester media scrum on Monday hoping to steal a march on their rivals by watching the body language of the respective squads will not have learned anything to their advantage.

Both sets of players mingled, chatting amiably, and both camps looked calm and collected with no signs of over-confidence.

It promises to be a belter – let’s just hope that when it comes to four o’clock it is Brett ‘Mr Burns’ Hodgson who is collecting the trophy.

On the 114th birthday of rugby league nothing would be more fitting than its most historic trophy returning to the game’s birthplace – bring the cup home boys!