Oldham 16-3 Hull Kingston Rovers — 1924/25 Challenge Cup Final

Data last verified: 11 August 2026.

1924/25 Challenge Cup Final: Oldham 16-3 Hull Kingston Rovers, at Headingley, Leeds.

Sourcing caveat: A second-pass search (Aug 2026) used individual player biographies to add two Oldham (team1) players — Bob Sloman and Albert Brough, the latter explicitly credited with a try (added to team1_tries below) — and three Hull KR (team2) players: captain and fullback Laurie Osborne, second-row Frank Bielby, and winger Louis Harris. A fourth-pass search (Aug 2026, this pass) found the Oldham RLFC Heritage Trust's own match-report page for this final, which gives the complete 13-man Oldham (team1) squad by shirt number, taking team1 from 2 to 13 of 13, and a full scoring breakdown — tries by Corsi, Davies, Farrar and Brough, goals by Farrar (2) — that sums exactly to Oldham's 16 points (4 tries at 3 points plus 2 goals at 2 points), so this replaces the earlier partial team1_tries list and is treated as the complete and final scoring record for Oldham's side. That source lists players only by squad number with no explicit position words, so the position for each newly-added name is inferred from the standard front-to-back team-sheet order used by this club in this era (see the 1923/24 caveat elsewhere in this file for the full reasoning), and should be treated as lower-confidence than this entry's Wikipedia- or biography-sourced labels (Sloman's and Brough's positions, independently confirmed via their own biographies, are kept as given there rather than overwritten by the inferred label). Hull KR (team2) remains at 3 of 13 and Hull's 3-point score (a single goal) unattributed — the Heritage Trust site, as an Oldham-specific archive, does not cover the opposing side. No squad numbers are given for Hull KR since numbered shirts were not yet standard practice in this period.

Scorers

Oldham	Tries: Joe Corsi; Evan Davies; Reg Farrar; Albert Brough Goals: Reg Farrar (2 goals)
Hull Kingston Rovers	No scorers recorded.

Teams

Oldham			Hull Kingston Rovers
1	Ernest Knapman	Fullback	Laurie Osborne
2	Joe Corsi	Right wing	Louis Harris
3	Syd Rix	Right centre	Frank Bielby

Match officials

Referee	R. Jones

Match report

Oldham beat Hull Kingston Rovers at Headingley, Leeds, to win their second Challenge Cup (their first having come in 1899) in what was their fifth final appearance. For Hull KR it was only their second final, their previous appearance having come two decades earlier in 1905. The match drew 28,335 spectators and gate receipts of £2,878 10s 9d, figures recorded in some detail by contemporary accounts, with R. Jones named as the match referee and F. Fairhurst and W. K. Hirst as touch judges. The Rugby League Challenge Cup is rugby league's oldest and most prestigious knockout competition, first contested in 1896/97 under what was then the Northern Union. Its history has been interrupted only by the two World Wars, with four editions lost between 1915/16 and 1918/19 and one more in 1939/40; the finals played either side of those gaps, and during the Second World War itself, were sometimes contested as regional or two-legged fixtures under wartime emergency arrangements rather than the usual single showpiece match. For much of the competition's early history the final rotated around northern club and representative grounds such as Headingley, Fartown, Central Park and the Athletic Ground, Rochdale, before Wembley Stadium became the final's permanent home from 1928/29 onward (with a short break during Wembley's 2000-2007 reconstruction, when finals were staged at Murrayfield, Twickenham and the Millennium Stadium instead). This was the 25th Challenge Cup final played, and, under the name “Oldham,” the 2nd Challenge Cup title for the club. The result is recorded in this site's full results table alongside every other Challenge Cup final played since the competition's 1896/97 inception, cross-referenced against the venue and attendance figures gathered for that table.

Round by round

Jump to round:

Round 1

Result	Venue	Attendance	Date
Barnsley Utd 3–3 Dalton	Boulevard	—	1925-02-14
Broughton Rangers 0–8 Huddersfield	The Cliff	—	1925-02-14
Halifax 0–0 Featherstone Rovers	Thrum Hall	—	1925-02-14
Hull Kingston Rovers 9–0 Bramley	Craven Park	—	1925-02-14
Hunslet 25–0 Castleford	Parkside	—	1925-02-14
Keighley 4–0 Dewsbury	Lawkholme Lane	—	1925-02-18
Leigh 0–5 Oldham	Mather Lane	—	1925-02-14
Rochdale Hornets 7–0 Barrow	Athletic Ground	—	1925-02-14
St Helens Recs 15–5 Hull	City Road	8000	1925-02-14
Swinton 2–3 Batley	Chorley Road	—	1925-02-14
Twelve Apostles 0–27 Leeds	Headingley	—	1925-02-14
Wakefield Trinity 14–3 Salford	Belle Vue	—	1925-02-14
Warrington 11–3 Bradford Northern	Wilderspool	—	1925-02-14
Widnes 10–8 St Helens	Lowerhouse	—	1925-02-14
Wigan 116–0 Flimby & Fothergill	Central Park	—	1925-02-14
York 3–8 Wigan Highfield	Wigginton Road	—	1925-02-14

Round 1 Replays

Result	Venue	Attendance	Date
Dalton 3–2 Barnsley Utd	—	—	1925-02-18
Featherstone Rovers 2–2 Halifax	Post Office Road	—	1925-02-18
Halifax 2–6 Featherstone Rovers	Headingley	—	1925-02-23

Round 2

Result	Venue	Attendance	Date
Batley 30–3 Widnes	Mount Pleasant	—	1925-02-28
Dalton 5–74 St Helens Recs	City Road	4225	1925-02-28
Featherstone Rovers 6–2 Hunslet	Post Office Road	—	1925-02-28
Hull Kingston Rovers 13–5 Wigan Highfield	Craven Park	—	1925-02-28
Keighley 3–0 Wakefield Trinity	Lawkholme Lane	—	1925-02-28
Leeds 2–0 Wigan	Headingley	—	1925-02-28
Oldham 12–7 Warrington	Watersheddings	—	1925-02-28
Rochdale Hornets 5–0 Huddersfield	Athletic Ground	—	1925-02-28

Round 3

Result	Venue	Attendance	Date
Batley 4–5 Leeds	Mount Pleasant	—	1925-03-14
Keighley 0–5 Hull Kingston Rovers	Lawkholme Lane	—	1925-03-14
Oldham 26–0 Featherstone Rovers	Watersheddings	—	1925-03-14
Rochdale Hornets 9–5 St Helens Recs	Athletic Ground	12600	1925-03-14

Semi-Finals

Result	Venue	Attendance	Date
Leeds 6–7 Hull Kingston Rovers	Belle Vue, Wakefield	25263	1925-04-04
Oldham 9–0 Rochdale Hornets	Central Park, Wigan	26208	1925-04-04

Final

Result	Venue	Attendance	Date
Oldham 16–3 Hull Kingston Rovers	Headingley, Leeds	28335	1925-04-25

Early rounds feature amateur and community clubs alongside professional ones; team names are linked only where this site has a team page for that exact club, matching the same safety-first approach used for the Final's own results table.

Sources

← All Challenge Cup Finals