ROUGHYEDS now know when their 2021 season will begin.

The RFL has announced the Championship will kick-off on the weekend of February 27-28, which will see Oldham take to the field for the first time in 11 months.

The late February start will allow a 26-round campaign in the Championship, meaning each of the 14 clubs will be scheduled to play the other 13 home and away – leading to a play-off for the top six teams, and the £1M Game in October.

Clubs have agreed that should games still be behind closed doors then they will be streamed live on the RFL’s Our League app and website.

Oldham season ticket holders will be given access to home and away games free of charge, otherwise they are pay-per-view.

The opening Championship round will be followed by the first two rounds of the Challenge Cup on the first two weekends of March, with the 10 clubs from League 1 kicking off their campaigns in the first round joined by four Championship clubs, to produce seven winners who will join the other nine Championship clubs in the second round the following week.

That will produce eight winners who will contest four third round ties two weeks later to join the 12 Super League clubs in the last 16 in April.

Those four teams will also qualify for the semi-finals of the AB Sundecks 1895 Cup, the competition introduced for non-Super League clubs in 2019 to provide a second and more realistic opportunity of playing on Challenge Cup final day at Wembley.

In 2021, the AB Sundecks 1895 Cup semi-finals are again scheduled to be played on the same weekend as the Challenge Cup semi-finals in June, with the final at Wembley on Saturday July 17.

Full details of the league campaign will be determined early in the new year, when a decision will also be made on the Championship Summer Bash.

It has also been agreed that the league table in each competition will be determined on a points percentage system, as with Betfred Super League in 2020, in recognition of the likelihood of Covid-19 remaining a factor.