Fair enough and I shared your pain on the shoot out for those reasons. Getting to a final is not much easier these days. In the big two domestic cups, only 8 of the last 40 finalists have been from outside the monied 6. A 12.5% chance split between 14 of us: 0.89%. Much less if you look outside...
I'm not sure whether people realise the scale of the ask for a side outside of the monied six to win a major trophy.
One of the last ten domestic major trophies have been won by a team that wasn't involved in the Super League treachery: Leicester's FA Cup in 2021. (that's a 10% chance, or a...