A long way from home

We have many anomalies these days but surely the most onerous is having the 'Rugby League Challenge Cup Final' played "down south" at Wembley. 

To ask those northern fans, this year from Hull and Warrington, to travel 200 miles into foreign territory, where, not only the accents but also the rules of their specific game make this venue the wrong one.
In a brief snippet of TV footage of past Cup Games. Black and white grainy images of games played at Odsal Stadium in Bradford which once hosted a crowd of 102.000 fans  for the Warrington- Halifax Final in 1954 ( a game I attended with my Dad). The poor souls living in Lancashire had to pop over the Pennines and try to wrest the trophy from Yorkshire, a distance of 40 miles but they were still amongst their ain-folk,  still amongst the hills and customs shared, not amongst the "wide boys" down South.
In those days the jostle of the crowd, the banter, the camaraderie was all part of a Saturday rugby league game. My Dad took me to the matches at Odsal on his motor bike, no helmets in those days.  We parked up close to the ground and threaded our way with the growing throng of people through the turnstiles and into the ground.  Roughly terraced with railway sleepers and steel crush barriers to prevent the crowd from rolling onto those in front as people leaned forward to follow the game, our team Bradford Northern were at the top of the league or there about's, with their rivals, Wigan and St Helens playing in Lancashire.     There was total respect between the fans, I never experienced any hostility, unlike the trouble at football matches, and whilst the banter made you laugh there was little or no bad language, only the wit of the working man on his weekend away from work.
For some commercial reason the promoters demand Wembley and so it's a long slog down the M1, especially for the loosing side.
The code Rugby League, is specifically different to Rugby Football which was possibly derived from the Eton Wall Game. It's a game played by working class lads and not the traditional University rugger bugger's, who make up the game down South. It is argued that it's a tougher code with more tackles but with a modern code, designed to open the game and force the attacking team to kick away possession after 5 phases of play, the territorial relief has made the game a little less brutal.
Brutal or not, imagine those lads and lasses disembarking after a 4 hour trip, full of Tetley's Bitter to be met by those opportunists from Whitechapel with their three card tricks and overpriced memorabilia. Imagine the trauma when the Tetley's runs out and you are forced to drink London Pride. Imagine a journey home with your team having lost and the spectre of having to tell "the wife" that you spent nearly all the house-keeping money !!!!