Featuring clubs from the 1956–57 Northern Rugby Football League season, matches were played over September and October 1956.
Wakefield Trinity won the trophy by beating Hunslet in the final.
The actual area was at times increased to encompass other teams from outside the county such as Newcastle, Mansfield, Coventry, and even London (in the form of Acton & Willesden.
The Rugby League season always (until the onset of "Summer Rugby" in 1996) ran from around August-time through to around May-time and this competition always took place early in the season, in the Autumn, with the final taking place in (or just before) December (The only exception to this was when disruption of the fixture list was caused during, and immediately after, the two World Wars) This season there were no junior/amateur clubs taking part, no new entrants and no "leavers" and so the total of entries remained the same at sixteen.
The record attendance was 40,175 for a league match between Leeds and Bradford Northern on 21 May 1947.