Monday the 24th of April saw the launch of the Lottery funded Batley RLFC heritage project with a celebration of the first Challenge Cup final which Batley won 120 years ago to the day. John Roe started the evening off with a passionate speech about what heritage is and what it means to the club and local community and spoke about the importance of collecting memories and memorabilia because once they are gone they are gone forever.

Craig Lingard then read out extracts form the 1897 reporter that gave details of the infamous day that Batley won the cup. He then outlined the plans that were in place for the three year project and asked that if anyone was interested in getting involved in any way they should make contact with the club.

The event was extremely well attended and it was fantastic to see a number of ex players from different eras attend as well as ex coach Paul Storey, a number of Batley supporters as well as supporters from other clubs as well.