Get an early chance to show how competitive the the Middle 8 might be later this year.
Leigh host Salford, Bradford host HKR, Halifax visit Wakefield whilst Sheffield host Hull FC.

Leigh, the team steadily building for the future versus the team trying to buy quick success. The tie of the round in my mind.

Certainly a yardstick to see where we are. I expect a KR win, we're still a work in progress. But good opportunity for us to see how competitive we are against an SL side.

Leigh v.s Salford wil be very interesting.

Marwan will be rubbing his hands at the prospect of a gate over 3k for a change

Could the away fans outnumber the home I wonder?

No, it's at Leigh.

My bad.

In that case then could the players outnumber the away fans I wonder?

The top four championship sides all drawing the four included Super League sides. That's one hell of a coincidence!

Who'd have thought it... It couldn't have worked out any better as a promotion for the new league format

An astonishing coincidence in a challenge cup draw? Nooooo. You jest, sir.

Conspiracy theory nonsense!

Is this round televised?

I've just seen on twitter that Sky are going to show one game from this round. I'm really hoping they go for the Leigh SAlford game and not the Bulls match!

Err, Salford aren't in the bottom four, Cas' are.

Nobody said they were, did they?

To be fair with 2 points covering nearly 3/4's of the league. The bottom 4 could be a bottom 8 or 9 teams. With points so close each week is going to be an up and down affair for most clubs.

Wigan could be bottom 4 via a strange combination of results this weekend.

So come the CC games who know what the make up of the bottom 4 will be?

I think the point was that the top 4 championship clubs each drew one of the 4 superleague clubs in the draw. Where they are now is irrelevant as they are the only 4 clubs that could be drawn.

Personally I don't ascribe to this fix theory, but it is a little strange if nothing else

In the practice draw hull fc got Bradford and rovers got Sheffield

But Salford were in the bottom four (excluding the two relegated teams) last season. It was made clear last July that the clubs finishing 9th to 12th in SL in 2014 would enter the Challenge Cup at round 5 in 2015 with the teams that were in the top 8 in 2014 entering a round later. Hence Salford who finished 10th enter the cup at round 5 whilst Castleford who finished 4th last year enter in round 6 with the rest of last year's top 8.

The teams that make the top 8 in SL in 2015 do not enter the 2016 season's cup until round 6 whilst the 4 teams that won a place in SL by competing in the middle 8 in 2015 will enter the cup in round 5 in 2016. This pattern then continues (until someone decides to change the cup format).

Yeah my bad, forgot it was the bottom four from last season.

Leigh v Salford it is then
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Thats what we thought when we drew Wire in the quarters when we were in the Championship, we outplayed them and beat them.

Steadily building? When were they last being struck off, 2012/13?

Makes me laugh when people say Salford are buying success, when in reality all were doing is finally spending the same amount of the salary cap as the rest of Super League (Wakefield probably excluded).

I think it's more the lack of homegrown players in your squad that leads to that kind of thinking than anything else.

But I don't think anyone could accuse Salford of buying success.