The Yorkshire Wartime Cup was played for only once. Travel restrictions and petrol rationing plus many Yorkshire clubs closing down during the 1939-40 season, mainly through a shortage of players, meant that after the first season of wartime rugby a cup competition was no longer viable
Ironically, having not entered the 1939/40 Yorkshire Cup, a competition that didn’t take place, Captain Stanley J. Rhodes from the Bradford club proposed that a 1940 cup competition should take place. A meeting of interested clubs held on the 15th of February 1940 agreed that, subject to approval from the Yorkshire Rugby Football Union, the competition would take place. It was hoped that the Wartime Cup would generate funds for the clubs that took part. A percentage of all the gate receipts were to be pooled and then shared. It was also proposed that a collection would be taken at every game with the proceeds given to the Red Cross. The Wartime Cup competition was approved by the Yorkshire RFU, sixteen clubs entered, and the draw was made on the 1st of March 1940 at the Midland Hotel, in Bradford.
