CONSIDER yourselves lucky, BackPageLead readers. The banner at the top of this page still says "league".

On many websites (including those of our game's sugar daddies, News Limited) and in "puffs" at the top of newspaper pages, it just says "NRL". As the contest for our attention grows more intense and the background noise of iphones, ipads, digital radio, billboards and logos on motorised blimps all reach critical mass, that's the way it has to be.

It's all about branding. About a clear, simple message. It's enough to make you forget this is a sport we're talking about, one played by around one million people from from Avignon to Zetland.

And this weekend is assigned home of the greatest event rugby league has to offer. A day with enough history to make the NRL grand final look like some new flash-in-the-pan extreme-fighting bullshit.

A game with enough in-grained, soul-deep passion to make State of Origin look like GWS v Gold Coast Suns.

And because it still says "league" a few centimetres north of here, I'm going to write about it.

Sunday morning's Challenge Cup final between Leeds and Warrington at Wembley marks the 25th anniversary of a game I regard as one of the four or five best I have ever seen, the Wigan v Hull classic which pitted Peter Sterling against Brett Kenny.

Back in those days, the Australian media showed the British game plenty of respect despite the unbeaten Kangaroo Tour three years earlier. David Fordham headed up a commentary team sent from Sydney especially for that match and this 16-year-old sat in front of the box with his finger on the VHS 'pause' button like a wild west gunslinger, cutting out ads at 1am after taping every TV news preview in sight.

Five years later, on my very first trip overseas, my first-ever day in the UK was spent at a Warrington-Oldham Challenge Cup semi. Warrington was the team of my penpal Jim Savage, who I had met just a few hours before we all headed off to the dearly departed Central Park for the match.

"The Wire" ("there are no Wolves in Warrington," Jim likes to say) won and they were off to Wembley - and so I was I. I found the experience so overwhelming, with the singing and the unbridled love between opposing fans - including those whose team wasn't even playing on the day - that I actually taped the crowd. Still got the C90 to prove it.

On three occasions since, I have made completely braindead dashes to the northern hemisphere in search of that feeling of walking up Wembley Way for the first time. As a result, I have a better understanding of the concept of Mecca.

In 1999, I landed the day before the game, jogged across the Thames (using the bridge on this occasion) on game day listening to "Lucky Man" by the Verve and felt every word of the chorus as I made my way through pilgrims from the north in bright sunshine. Later that day, Richard Branson led London Broncos out onto Wembley.

While the Twin Towers at Wembley were being demolished by some tardy, expensive Australian company, the game inextricably linked to the cliche "showpiece" went on the road.

In 2002 I cut it so fine getting to Murrayfield that I got changed in baggage claim in Edinburgh. I had almost been not allowed on my connecting flight, meaning I would have travelled to the other side of the world for the honour of watching Wigan-St Helens on television at Heathrow. After the game, I went to a party.

Then the next day I came straight back to Sydney and went straight to work.

My favourite Challenge Cup final weekend, though, was Cardiff in 2004. The sight of Mick Hogan, currently CEO of Wigan, crossing the street to say hello dressed as Captain Thunder - the caped, tighted, purple-clad mascot of Gateshead - will live with me forever. He was in a group of 10 Captain Thunders....

My casting vote allowed Sean Long to win the Lance Todd trophy for the third time. Wigan coach Mike Gregory, then in the grip of motor neuron disease which would eventually claim his life, used his disability as a comic aid, telling the press conference " coaching is all about ........ timing."

And so while British rugby league continues to slip from the national consciousness in England by virtue of the same processes and purposes I described at the start of this column, it also continues to thrive. Rugby league in the UK is not part of the entertainment industry, feeding the tabloid celebrity machine. It is part of being a northerner, of a ritual that runs in families almost as far back as the industrial revolution.

There are Super League teams in Wales, London and Perpignan these days and BBC icon Ray French handed the microphone over to Dave Woods a couple of years back.

But the Cup still starts with teams representing the army, navy and airforce as well as amateur sides from as far away as Russia and it still winds its through six months or so until two teams walk out slowly and shake hands with whichever member of royalty can get there. It's a celebration of all that is worthy about rugby league, the things that the sport is often made to feel guilty about like working class roots and simple values.

My old penpal has become a lifelong friend. He lives in Boston now but will be flying back for the big one this weekend. He'll go there with a bloke called Howard Scott, a Harlequins fan he met in another outpost of our supposedly dying game, the south of France.

The two of them may not seem to have much in common. They live on opposite sides of the Atlantic and speak with accents so different you wonder at the fact they both carry the same passport. But what they have in common is not an interest in Super League or the NRL or an afternoon on the piss in London.

It's that word that still sits at the top of this page.

Starting next year, when I am hopefully freed from having to clock in at an office anywhere, I plan to never miss another Challenge Cup final as long as I live.