Sheffield Eagles soaring again after long road from Challenge Cup glory

I f Sheffield Eagles were a major American sporting franchise, you suspect there would have been a film of their story by now. Alas, the Hollywood scriptwriters have not got their teeth into rugby league yet, but that does not make Sheffield’s journey over the past 25 years any less remarkable.

This week, the 1998 squad reunited to mark the 25th anniversary of their Challenge Cup final victory against Wigan, the greatest upset in the sport’s history. Sheffield, 14-1 outsiders, stunned one of the game’s most famous clubs to win the cup and, barely a decade after forming, it felt like it was the start of a bright future for rugby league in South Yorkshire.

“It’s devastating what happened next,” says Mark Aston, their star player that day and now the head coach. “We’d worked so hard to get to the top and it all came crashing down.”

The expected boom in attendance never materialised and within a year the club announced they would have to fold if new investors were not found. In late 1999, with the Rugby Football League keen to reduce the number of clubs in Super League, Sheffield accepted £1m to merge with Huddersfield Giants, becoming the Huddersfield-Sheffield Giants. It was a disastrous scheme that did not last a year and was immediately rejected by Sheffield supporters.

Led by Aston, who had won man-of-the-match in the final less than two years earlier, the Eagles applied to start again at the bottom of the pyramid.

“The Sheffield fans were distraught,” he says. “They were begging me to keep the club alive, fans were crying on the streets. I didn’t know what they wanted me to do. I could play, I could coach a bit … but running a club? But through fan power and sheer resilience, we got it going again.”

Sheffield twice