Untold story of Magic Weekend's birth, early worries and the clubs who didn't want it

On a quiet moment in the Millennium Stadium tunnel moments after the first Magic Weekend concluded 15 years ago, two RFL officials afforded themselves a brief moment of congratulations. It wasn’t anything to do with the remarkable drama that drew the maiden event to a close, as Leeds snatched their most controversial of wins over local rivals Bradford with Jordan Tansey’s last gasp try. Although that did give the first Magic Weekend a storyline that would fill newspaper columns and radio phone-ins and lift its profile immediately.

Instead it was a moment of relief that the sport had managed to do something that few others would dream of - bring 12 different clubs together in one location over the course of two days, creating a celebration that fans would want to return to.

“Sally Bolton was our events manager at the time, and she took a lot of the organisational strain of delivering what was a trio of games in two consecutive days,” explained Nigel Wood, the then RFL chief executive whose original idea Magic was.

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"It was a big undertaking from an operational and logistics point of view. I met Sally in the tunnel after the third game on the second day and we had a quiet moment of celebration that we’d pulled it off. There was enough feel-good about the event for us to realise that the baby had been born safely, so to speak.”

This being rugby league, of course, the path to that opening event was far from smooth. Wood and his RFL board members had been keen to add another major event to the sport’s calendar to compliment the Challenge Cup and Grand Final.

There was an affinity with Cardiff’s Millennium Stadium and