GRL Cheltenham Rugby Festival is a rugby league nines event held in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire. It is organised by the Gloucestershire County Rugby League in partnership with Cheltenham Borough Council and the Tourist Board.
It will take place on Friday 2 May at the Prince of Wales stadium in Cheltenham. The event is intended to dovetail with the Rugby Football League’s Millennium Magic event in Cardiff on the weekend of 3–4 May.
It comprises two main elements: the All Golds Cup and the 1908 Cup.
The All Golds Cup is the festival’s main event. This is a rugby league nines event for eight senior teams.
The Cup is named in honour of the famous New Zealand team that defeated England at Cheltenham’s Athletic Ground on 15 February 1908 to win the first international rugby league series.
This is awarded to the player of the tournament and is named in honour of the New Zealand forward who scored the winning try for the All Golds in the last minutes of the game to secure an 8 - 5 victory.
This is a rugby league nines event for eight local schools at year 8.
The 1908 Cup commemorates the year of the All Golds match.
The Arthur Smith Award is presented to the player of the tournament and is named in honour of the Gloucestershire rugby player who joined Oldham and represented England. He played in the All Golds test in Cheltenham in 1908.
The 2009 event took place on Friday 24 April 2009 at Newlands Park, With the Royal Navy winning the event. The winners of the event will qualify to play in the 2009 Carnegie Floodlit Nines
Cheltenham is a spa town and borough on the edge of the Cotswolds in Gloucestershire, England. Cheltenham became known as a health and holiday spa town resort following the discovery of mineral springs in 1716, and claims to be the most complete Regency town in Britain. It is directly northeast of Gloucester.
The National Rugby League is a professional rugby league competition in Australasia which contains clubs from New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria, the Australian Capital Territory and New Zealand.
Rugby sevens is a variant of rugby union in which teams are made up of seven players playing seven-minute halves, instead of the usual 15 players playing 40-minute halves. Rugby sevens is administered by World Rugby, the body responsible for rugby union worldwide. The game is popular at all levels, with amateur and club tournaments generally held in the summer months. Sevens is one of the most well distributed forms of rugby, and is popular in parts of Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas, and especially in the South Pacific.
Super League was an Australian rugby league football administrative body that conducted professional competition in Australia and New Zealand for one season in 1997. Along with Super League of Europe, it was created by News Corporation during the Super League war which arose following an unsuccessful attempt to purchase the pay television rights to rugby league in Australia. After two years of legal battles the competition was played for a single season in 1997 alongside the rival Australian Rugby League (ARL) competition before the two merged in 1998 to form the National Rugby League (NRL).
Tag rugby, Flag rugby or Rippa rugby is a non-contact team game in which each player wears a belt that has two velcro tags attached to it, or shorts with velcro patches. The mode of play is based on rugby league with many similarities to touch football, although tag rugby is often deemed a closer simulation of full contact rugby league than touch. Attacking players attempt to dodge, evade and pass a rugby ball while defenders attempt to prevent them scoring by "tagging" – pulling a velcro attached tag from the ball carrier, rather than a full contact tackle. Tag rugby is used in development and training by both rugby league and rugby union communities.
The Australian national rugby league team, the Kangaroos, have represented Australia in senior men's rugby league football competitions since the establishment of the game in Australia in 1908. Administered by the Australian Rugby League Commission, the Kangaroos are ranked first in the IRL Men's World Rankings. The team is the most successful in Rugby League World Cup history, having won the competition 12 times, and contested 15 of the 16 finals, only failing to reach the final in the 1954 inaugural tournament. Only five nations have beaten Australia in test matches, and Australia has an overall win percentage of 69%.
Sport in New Zealand largely reflects the nation's colonial heritage, with some of the most popular sports being rugby union, rugby league, cricket, association football, basketball, horse racing and netball, which are primarily played in Commonwealth countries. New Zealand has enjoyed success in many sports, notably rugby union, rugby league, cricket, America's Cup sailing, world championship and Olympics events, and motorsport.
Rugby union in Cornwall is Cornwall's most popular spectator sport with a large following. The followers of the national side are dubbed Trelawny's Army. In 1991 and 1999 Cornwall won the County Championship final played at Twickenham Stadium, beating Yorkshire and Gloucestershire respectively to win the Cup. They had another strong spell in the 2010s, reaching seven of the eight finals contested between 2013 and 2022, winning four of them.
Rugby league is played across England but is most popular in Northern England, especially Yorkshire and Lancashire where the game originated. These areas are the heartland of rugby league. The sport is also popular in Cumbria where the amateur game is particularly powerful.
Nigel Faletoese Vagana, also known by the nicknames of "Pablo", and "Chiko", is a former professional rugby league footballer who played in the 1990s and 2000s, as a wing, centre and five-eighth. A New Zealand and Samoa international representative, he retired as the Kiwis' all-time top try-scorer with 19. Vagana played club football in New Zealand for the Warriors, in England for Warrington, and in Australia for the Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs, Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks and the South Sydney Rabbitohs. Vagana represented the New Zealand national team 32 times between 1998 and 2006, including playing in the 2000 World Cup. He is also the cousin of Bradford Bulls prop-forward Joe Vagana, and former Silver Ferns netball player Linda Vagana.
Sean O'Loughlin is an English rugby league coach and former professional rugby league footballer. He is an assistant coach of Wigan Warriors where he spent his entire playing career, playing as a loose forward for the Super League club, which he captained. Has also played for Great Britain and England at the international level, the latter of which he has also captained.
Gloucestershire Warriors RLFC are a rugby league team from the county of Gloucestershire in England. They play in the Conference League South and in 2006 made their debut in the Challenge Cup.
Robert Fulton, also nicknamed "Bozo", was an Australian international rugby league footballer, coach and later commentator. Fulton played, coached, selected for and has commentated on the game with great success at the highest levels and has been named amongst Australia's greatest rugby league players of the 20th century. As a player Fulton won three premierships with the Manly-Warringah Sea Eagles in the 1970s, the last as captain. He represented the Australian national side on thirty-five occasions, seven times as captain. He had a long coaching career at the first grade level, taking Manly to premiership victory in 1987 and 1996. He coached the Australian national team in thirty-nine Tests. He was a New South Wales State selector and a national selector. He was a radio commentator with 2GB at the time of his death in 2021, aged 73. In 1981, he was selected as one of the initial four post-war "Immortals" of the Australian game and, in 2008, he was named in Australia's team of the century.
Lachlan Coote is a former Australian rugby league footballer who last played for Hull Kingston Rovers in the Super League.
Carnegie Floodlit Nines is a rugby league nines event held at Headingley Stadium in Leeds, West Yorkshire, England. The same stadium hosted the Headingley Sevens, rugby league sevens tournament from 1965-78. The old BBC2 Floodlit Trophy is awarded to the winner of the competition.
David Mead is a Papua New Guinean former professional rugby league footballer who last played as a winger, centre or fullback for the Brisbane Broncos in the National Rugby League (NRL) and Papua New Guinea at international level.
George W. Thomas, also known by the nicknames of "Ponty" and "Stitch", was a Welsh rugby union and professional rugby league footballer who played in the 1900s and 1910s. He played club rugby union (RU) for Pontnewydd RFC and Newport RFC, and representative level rugby league (RL) for Great Britain, Wales, Other Nationalities and Lancashire, and at club level for Warrington, as a goal-kicking forward.
The South West Rugby League is a summer rugby league competition for amateur teams in South West England. The competition was formed in 2003 as the RLC South West Regional. Its name changed following the 2012 restructure of amateur rugby league in Great Britain.
Tyrone Roberts is an Australian professional rugby league footballer who plays for the Burleigh Bears in the Queensland Cup as a halfback or five-eighth.
 | This rugby league competition article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
