Challenge Cup final: Celebrating the 80th final at Wembley with Hull KR v Leigh

The men's Challenge Cup Final between Leigh and Hull KR will be a historic occasion - the 80th time this grand occasion has been held at Wembley Stadium.

Someone will end a long drought with victory, with either Leigh lifting the trophy for the first time in 52 years, or Hull KR ending their 43-year wait to be crowned cup kings.

Another quirk is that it's the first final in 37 years not to feature either Wigan, St Helens, Warrington or Leeds, so there is a genuine freshness to one of the great days in the game's calendar.

How about 80 Wembley finals! What about that for a landmark?

Not to mention that it is also the first time a women's final will be staged, as Leeds Rhinos and St Helens also feature on a day of showpiece matches.

While the 'Cup Final' has been hawked around the country down the decades, Wembley is surely its spiritual home.

As historians will know, the first Wembley final was in 1929, Wigan beating Dewsbury 13-2. The game's administrators decided that taking the showpiece to the relatively new national stadium would do wonders for the profile of the sport.

They were clearly delighted, because the experiment was repeated in 1930 and 1931. But then someone forgot to book Wembley in 1932 (how very rugby league!) so that year the final was played at Central Park, Wigan, instead.

• Leeds and St Helens ready to make Wembley history in women's final

• Lam family looking to make Wembley history with Leigh

• Shaun Kenny-Dowall hopes to ink Hull KR success

Imagine what the Twitteratti would have made of that.

A word here for Swinton fans. Swinton made the final in 1932, beaten 11-8 by Leeds in what sounds like a gripping game. Sadly, they missed out on the old 'twin towers' of Wembley because of the administrators' oversight, and have never played in the final since.

The war years of 1941 to 1945 also saw the final moved out of London - it was played instead on a two-legged home and away basis by the finalists.

It was only a temporary departure, and after an unbroken tenure from 1946 onwards it would not be until the rebuild of the old stadium between 2000 to 2006 that the not unpleasant experiment of taking the final on the road was implemented - to Edinburgh, Cardiff and Twickenham.

Yet it was good to be back and negotiating familiar tube stations, pubs and hotels in 2007, even if it was no longer the same old ground.

Last year's one-off switch to Tottenham may be a pointer towards moving away from the competition's traditions in the future, but for the moment let's relish Wembley.

A personal half-century

On a personal note, this Saturday will be my 50th consecutive Challenge Cup final as neutral, fan and then journalist. If my maths are right, 41 of those were at Wembley.

Whoever you are, the first is always very special. I can still remember the feeling, as a six-year-old, of being utterly awestruck climbing up to the back of the great terracing, opposite the tunnel end, when my dad first took us down to watch the 1974 final between Warrington and Featherstone.

Those acres and acres of concrete steps and seats framing that lush green in the middle.

The 1985 final was joyful. In an age when Aussie and Kiwi superstars blended in with our own homegrown heroes, Wigan and Hull put on a masterclass. Kenny, Ferguson, Gill, Leuluai, Sterling, Norton… they were stars for the ages.

And under a blistering sun they made magic with Wigan winning 28-24.

The 1998 final was something special too. Who would have thought it, a brand new shiny Sheffield downing Wigan, the great emperors of Wembley.

Wigan's name became synonymous with the cup in the late 1980s and 1990s and so it was with some relief that two new clubs came to the occasion in 1996. What a feast was provided by Bradford and St Helens, the latter winning 40-32 in a topsy-turvy, tub-thumping points-fest.

In recent years Leeds' 17-16 win over Salford in 2020 would have been judged amongst the greatest finals, had Covid not robbed us of a crowd. Hull's triumph over Warrington in 2016 was one for the romantics, as well as the Black and Whites.

So there's the game for you. What's your favourite final? As you sift through the evidence of eight decades of Wembley finals past, remind yourself of what a glorious day this is every year.

This year especially, be excited by the fact that Leigh v Hull KR, with all that history to be rewritten, could be right up there with the best.