It is a sparkling new piece of silverware for players who rarely get the chance to see their name in lights.

The final will be at Wembley, non-Super League clubs need not apply. This is for Championship and League One players only.

It sounded a very good idea at the time. So what’s not to like?

Well, quite a lot. There’s an old saying that the devil is in the detail and it is fairly obvious that detail was not high on the list of thinking behind this attempt to boost Challenge Cup Final ticket sales.

The new pot has been named the 1895 Cup and if you have to ask why it is called that then it is already a failure and on the way to becoming a one-season knockabout.

The title comes from the year that rugby league followers like to claim the game was formed. But all that happened in 1895 was the Northern Union clubs broke ranks over payments to players for lost wages. Rugby league did not get its name until 1922. But what’s in a name? Clearly something.

What was wrong with the simple title of Rugby League Shield? Football gets along fine with FA Trophy and FA Vase for their non-elite knockout cups.

A total of 1,253 people turned out of the launch of the 1895 Cup over the weekend. Alas, that was the entire turn-out for the four ties at Doncaster, Newcastle, Hunslet and Oldham.

Empty seats are something of a fixation among website-trawling rugby league fans. They will have a field day on August 24 if the 1895 Cup Final actually makes it on to the screen.

It will be played to a backdrop of about 70,000 vacant red seats AFTER the Challenge Cup has been presented and the winning supporters have left to celebrate and the losers on their way to drown their sorrows.

Timing is everything; without it all you have is an near-empty stadium.

One of the papers this week labelled it the RFL’s Hidden Secret. Three clubs – Coventry Bears, North Wales Crusaders and London Skolars – did not even bother to enter the new competition for the simple reason that some ties will be played in midweek (timing again) and, if they are being honest, it is also because they will lose money.

Workington Town, winners at Hunset, and Barrow Raiders are the county’s two clubs still in the competition.

Whitehaven went out at Oldham but I didn’t hear coach Gary Charlton shedding too many tears in his radio interview after the match.

What sounded like a good idea at the time now looks as if it was nothing more than an afterthought. And that is a shame.

*While Manchester City and Liverpool slug it out in the best Premier League title race for years, it is the failings of other clubs that hog most of the headlines.

Was it a smile or just a grimace? It was hard to tell from the fleeting glimpse the camera gave of Ole Gunnar Solskjaer as he sat through his team’s humiliating performance at Huddersfield.

Monty Python gave football fans a song for every occasion with their ditty: “Always look on the Bright Side of Life.”

There are not many people singing those lyrics around Old Trafford right now.

But things could be worse. They could be supporters of the oldest league club in the country. After 131 years, Notts County can no longer claim that distinction. They bowed out of the Football League when they were beaten 3-1 at Swindon.

Bos Neal Ardley was right when he said that relegation was not all down to Saturday’s defeat – it was the result of a season-long failure.

Supporters of Manchester United and the others in the top six may be feeling the pain right now, but it will pass. It may never be the same again down Meadow Lane.

*Just when you were getting to like the idea that a cricketing summer might be a good time for quiet relaxation, up pops old friend Kevin Pietersen to disturb the peace.

The former England batsman, who for almost ten years has been parading his talents around the world’s Leagues of Big Bashes, will appear in a Sky documentary KP: Story of a Genius this summer.

And he won’t be coming along quietly. His view that players like Stuart Broad, Jimmy Anderson, Graeme Swann and Matt Prior were responsible for deterring young players from playing international cricket will get a lengthy airing.

Never one for a quiet life, KP can be guaranteed to divide opinions. Burying the hatchet and letting bygones be bygones is not his thing.