Leeds 15-10 Halifax — 1941/42 Challenge Cup Final

Odsal, Bradford · Attendance: 15,250

Data last verified: 11 August 2026.

1941/42 Challenge Cup Final: Leeds 15-10 Halifax, at Odsal, Bradford.

Sourcing caveat: Try scorers, goal kickers, and the referee could not be confirmed for this final. Second-attempt update: full lineups for BOTH sides below were found via technique 3 (club-history retrospective) — the Leeds Rhinos timeline site's 1941-1942 page prints both teams as they ran out, naming Gus Risman among the Leeds backs (a Salford player guesting under wartime arrangements) and Halifax's Meek — the same Meek who scored the goal in the 1940/41 final — at second row. Positions are inferred from the standard 1-13 order of the printed lists (fullback, wing, centre, centre, wing, stand-off, scrum-half, then six forwards), as the source gives names only, not position labels or squad numbers; no coach is named for either side.

Scorers

Leeds	No scorers recorded.
Halifax	No scorers recorded.

Teams

		Halifax
Brough	Fullback	Lockwood
Edwards	Wing	Bevan
Risman	Centre	Smith
Hey	Centre	Rule
Evans	Wing	Doyle
Morris	Stand-off	Todd
Jenkins	Scrum-half	McCue
Prosser	Prop	Brereton
Murphy	Hooker	Jones
Satterthwaite	Prop	Irving
Gregory	Second row	Millington
Brown	Second row	Meek
Tattersfield	Loose forward	Dixon

Match officials

Referee	—

Match report

Leeds beat Halifax 15-10 on 6 June 1942, the 41st staging of rugby league's oldest knockout competition, a wartime regional final again staged at Odsal Stadium, Bradford, consistent with the pattern of the 1940/41 final. 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). Since 1946/47, the competition's individual award, the Lance Todd Trophy, has been presented to the final's outstanding player, voted for by a panel of media representatives at the final whistle — on several notable occasions the trophy has gone to a player on the losing side, an unusual honour that reflects the award's focus on individual performance rather than simply reflecting the final scoreline. This was the 41st Challenge Cup final played, and, under the name “Leeds,” the 6th 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. As with all of this site's rugby league match reports, any statistic that couldn't be confirmed from an accessible source — a scorer's name, an exact minute, a goal-kicking split — has been left out entirely rather than estimated, in line with the sourcing standard applied across the Challenge Cup, World Cup, World Club Challenge and domestic finals coverage on this site.

Round by round

Jump to round:

Round 1

Result	Venue	Attendance	Date
Featherstone R. 11–21 St Helens	Post Office Road	—	1942-04-11
Wakefield T. 7–4 Batley	Belle Vue	—	1942-04-11
Batley 2–5 Wakefield T.	Mount Pleasant	—	1942-04-18
St Helens 8–3 Featherstone R.	Knowsley Road	—	1942-04-18

Round 2

Result	Venue	Attendance	Date
Bradford N. 18–0 Keighley	Odsal Stadium, Bradford	—	1942-04-25
Halifax 14–5 Huddersfield	Thrum Hall	—	1942-04-25
Hull 34–0 Bramley	The Boulevard	—	1942-04-25
Hunslet 16–3 St Helens	Parkside	—	1942-04-25
Oldham 14–3 Castleford	Watersheddings	—	1942-04-25
Swinton 29–5 York	Station Road	—	1942-04-25
Wakefield T. 3–0 Leeds	Belle Vue	—	1942-04-25
Wigan 6–4 Dewsbury	Central Park	—	1942-04-25
Bramley 8–17 Hull	Barley Mow	—	1942-05-02
Castleford 0–10 Oldham	Wheldon Road	—	1942-05-02
Dewsbury 12–14 Wigan	Crown Flatt	—	1942-05-02
Huddersfield 10–10 Halifax	Fartown	—	1942-05-02
Keighley 6–17 Bradford N.	Lawkholme Lane	—	1942-05-02
Leeds 8–0 Wakefield T.	Headingley	—	1942-05-02
St Helens 21–14 Hunslet	Knowsley Road	—	1942-05-02
York 7–15 Swinton	Wigginton Road	—	1942-05-02

Round 3

Result	Venue	Attendance	Date
Bradford N. 11–10 Halifax	Odsal Stadium, Bradford	—	1942-05-09
Leeds 22–8 Hull	Headingley	—	1942-05-09
Oldham 29–0 Hunslet	Watersheddings	—	1942-05-09
Swinton 0–9 Wigan	Station Road	—	1942-05-09
Halifax 21–16 Bradford N.	Thrum Hall	—	1942-05-16
Hull 12–7 Leeds	The Boulevard	—	1942-05-16
Hunslet 18–17 Oldham	Parkside	—	1942-05-16
Wigan 12–17 Swinton	Central Park	—	1942-05-16

Semi-Final

Result	Venue	Attendance	Date
Halifax 10–0 Wigan	Thrum Hall	—	1942-05-23
Leeds 5–2 Oldham	Headingley	—	1942-05-23
Oldham 3–12 Leeds	Watersheddings	—	1942-05-30
Wigan 16–16 Halifax	Central Park	—	1942-05-30

Final

Result	Venue	Attendance	Date
Leeds 15–10 Halifax	Odsal Stadium, Bradford	15,250	1942-06-06

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

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