The Captain Morgan Trophy was a knock-out trophy introduced by the Rugby League for season 1973-74. It was scrapped after only one season.
Background
The Captain Morgan Trophy was a knock-out trophy introduced by the Rugby League supposedly intended to fill an “Imaginary” void in the season's fixture list.
The competition was introduced for the season 1973-1974, but failed to catch the imagination of the public, or the clubs themselves and only took place for the one single season.
The competition was sponsored by the House of Seagram, makers at that time of Captain Morgan Rum. (Note - This product is now produced by Diageo plc.),
The Captain Morgan Trophy competition had slightly different qualification and draw rules, as follows :-
1) Qualification for the competition was open to:-
a) the eight winners of the first round of the Yorkshire County cup
b) The seven winners of the first round of the Lancashire county cup and because there were only fifteen teams in the Lancashire competition, the Lancashire team losing in the first round by the smallest margin.
c) The idea of this arrangement was to eliminate some of the “lesser” or “poorer” teams from the competition, thus reducing the number of games which are very one sided. This objective was somewhat defeated after teams like St Helens, Hull and Hull Kingston Rovers failed to gain entry.
2) In addition to this, for the first round the draw kept the Yorkshire sides apart from those on the West of the Pennines (i.e. those in Lancashire and Cumberland)
3) The two sets of teams were all brought together for the subsequent rounds.
The first and only final was held at The Willows in Salford, on 26 January 1974. Warrington defeated Featherstone Rovers 4-0 in front of a disappointing crowd of only 5,269.
The "Man of the Match" award was won by Derek Whitehead.
The Warrington team was Derek Whitehead, Mick Philbin, Derek Noonan, Frank Reynolds, John Bevan, Alan Whittle, Parry Gordon, Dave Chisnall, Kevin Ashcroft, Brian Brady, Bobby Wanbon, David Wright, Ian Mather, with substitutes Billy Pickup (not used) and Joe Price. (Alex Murphy was injured)
The Featherstone Rovers team included Harold Box and John "Keith" Bridges.