Heartlands Cup

Heartlands Cup

The Heartlands Cup logo
Founded	1904; 115 years ago
Region	Aeia (IRB)
Number of teams	8
Current champions	Navack (29th title)
Most successful team(s)	Newrey (32 titles)
Heartlands Cup 2019

The Heartlands Cup is an annual men's rugby union tournament between the teams of Newrey, Navack, Cuirpthe, tir Lhaeraidd, Midrasia, Veleaz, and Vvarden, with the addition of an invited nation. The event, organised by the International Rugby Board, was established in 1904, following the success of the first international rugby match between Newrey and Navack. Initially referred to as the Cross-Channel Cup, it was renamed following the admission of Cuirpthe to the Iron Triangle (1920-1954). The additions of tir Lhaeraidd and Midrasia led to it being renamed the Heartlands Cup (1955-present), remaining unaffected by the admission of Veleaz (1960) and Vvarden (1980).

Overall, the most successful team is Newrey, with 32 victories (31 outright, with one shared), against Navack's 29 victories (28 outright and one shared), the second most successful team in the tournament. Since the beginning of the Heartlands Cup era in 1955, only Veleaz and Vvarden have failed to win the Heartlands title, although Midrasia has not seen a victory since 1990.

History and Expansion

Since the founding of both the sport in 1830, and the founding of the Newreyan Rugby Football Union in 1876, rugby had largely been confined to Newrey, with the largest teams often being teams manned by university students. One such team, the Olds Boys of Buryham took a tour of rugby in Lhedwin in 1875, largely centred in the Navish areas, introducing and popularising the sport with the Navish. While banned during the war years, due to its Newreyan origins, the sport was reintroduced in 1901, where its popularity began to rise. In 1904, a match was held between teams chosen by the respective national rugby boards of each nation, resulting in the first international rugby match, where 5,000 people came to view the Newreyan victory. The incentive of large crowds gathering to watch the game proved enough for both boards to agree to an annual test series, named the Cross-Channel Cup, where the two teams would play each other a total of five times, with the team with the most victories claiming the title and hosting the other the next year.

Much of the early tournament was characterised by Newreyan dominance, with the team of 1904 setting the record of least amount of tries conceded in a tournament, with only 3 in 5 games, a record that still stands to this day. It wasn't until the fourth iteration of the tournament did Navack win, with a 3 games won against 2 lost, a result that sent shockwaves through Newreyan rugby circles as the team was touted as the best side in the world at the time. Despite regaining the title the next year, the rest of the Cross-Channel era would be characterised by tit-for-tat victories, with Newrey only remaining the most successful on account of its early dominance. By 1918, there had been calls for the tournament to be expanded, due to presence of only two teams beginning to bore spectators, despite the high attendance for games. Cuirpthe was long seen as a secondary power in the rugby world, behind the preeminence of both Navack and Newrey, however a Cuirpthean team had shocked the world when it managed to win a tour against seven Newreyan university teams. This victory convinced the IRB to begin talks with the Cuirpthean Rugby Union through the 1919 test series, with the team agreeing to join the 1920 season. Newrey was the last team to win the Cross-Channel Cup, having failed to win the previous two years.

To celebrate the expansion of the tournament, it was renamed to the Iron Triangle, due to the belief that Newrey, Navack, and Cuirpthe, were the top teams of international rugby. The first Iron Triangle tournament was hosted by Cuirpthe, despite objections by some Newreyans as they had won the previous year and on account of the difficult history the two nations shared. However, the tournament was only attended by Cuirpthe and Newrey, as the Navish Republican Revolution had reached its zenith and the Union had been unable to send a team, but otherwise the series went ahead and proved to be a relative success, despite the Navish absence, and ended in a Newreyan victory. The following season of Cuirpthean victory proved to be just as shocking to the Navish as the Navish victory had been to the Newreyans, as both Unions had not expect the Cuirptheans to be victorious quite to take the victory in their second season, something that had taken the Navish nearly four seasons to do. The next five editions of the tournament proved to be a nightmare for the Newreyans, who failed to win any of them, and it also proved to be the most amount of seasons to go by without a Newreyan victory. The run of victories by the Navish and Cuirptheans led to the sport's popularity exploding in both countries, and the games began to be attended by crowds in the excess of 50,000, with the 1926 final between Newrey and Cuirpthe setting the record for 120,000 attendees.

Despite the growth in popularity, the outbreak of the Cuirpthean Civil War in 1927 led to all three Unions agree to postpone the tournament until the end of the conflict, out of respect for the soldiers fighting. The two years without a tournament are often referred to as the Dry Years due to the lack of winners or games, except for those on a national level, but demand for the tournament to restart eventually became deafening for the unions and risked a split between those that wanted the tournament to continue and those that didn't. In the end, the Navish and Newrey Unions agreed to a brief revival of the Cross-Channel Cup for the 1929 and 1930 seasons, with the Newrey and Navack winning it in 1929 and 1930 respectively. In 1931, despite the continuation of the war, the Cuirpthean Union sent a team to the Triangle as a means to bolster morale and to prevent being permanently excluded from the tournament. The 1931 series became the first, and only, time that there were two victors, as Newrey and Navack both had 6 victories and 2 defeats. This event led to the establishment of the Tie-Breaker, a decider match between two tied teams, to prevent a similar drawn outcome. As the tradition of hosting the tournament was often awarded to the victor of the previous tournament, the job was given to both teams (However much of the tournament took place in Navack as the Lhedwinic Channel was deemed too dangerous for ships to travel across due to the ongoing Cuirpthean Civil War), with Cuirpthe winning the tournament.

Results

Year	Host nation	Winner
1904	Newrey	Newrey
1905	Newrey	Newrey
1906	Navack	Newrey
1907	Newrey	Newrey
1908	Navack	Navack
1909	Navack	Newrey
1910	Newrey	Newrey
1911	Newrey	Navack
1912	Navack	Navack
1913	Navack	Newrey
1914	Newrey	Newrey
1915	Newrey	Navack
1916	Navack	Newrey
1917	Newrey	Navack
1918	Navack	Navack
1919	Navack	Newrey
1920	Cuirpthe	Newrey
1921	Newrey	Cuirpthe
1922	Cuirpthe	Navack
1923	Navack	Navack
1924	Navack	Cuirpthe
1925	Cuirpthe	Cuirpthe
1926	Cuirpthe	Newrey
1927	Not Played	No Winner
1928	Not Played	No Winner
1929	Newrey	Newrey
1930	Newrey	Navack
1931	Navack	Navack & Newrey
1932	Newrey & Navack	Cuirpthe
1933	Newrey	Newrey