JJB Sports Super League IV was the official name for the year 1999's Super League championship season, the 105th season of top-level professional

rugby league Rugby league football, commonly known as just rugby league and sometimes football, footy, rugby or league, is a full-contact sport played by two teams of thirteen players on a rectangular field measuring 68 metres (75 yards) wide and 11 ...

football in Britain, and the fourth championship run by the Super League. The start of Super League IV saw the emergence of a North East based Rugby League Club,

Gateshead Thunder Gateshead Thunder may refer to: *Gateshead Thunder (1999) Gateshead Thunder was a professional rugby league club founded in 1999 in Gateshead, Tyne and Wear, England, which competed in the 1999 Super League but then merged with Hull Sharks af ...

as well as newly promoted

Wakefield Trinity Wildcats Wakefield Trinity is a professional rugby league club in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, England, that plays in the Super League. One of the original twenty-two clubs that formed the Rugby Football League, Northern Rugby Football Union in 1895, betw ...

to expand the league to fourteen teams.

Rule changes

* The 40/20 rule was introduced to reward accurate kicking in general play. The rule, which had been used in Australia since 1997, gave the head and feed at the resulting

scrum Scrum may refer to: Sport * Scrum (rugby), a method of restarting play in rugby union and rugby league ** Scrum (rugby union), scrum in rugby union * Scrum, an offensive melee formation in Japanese game Bo-taoshi Media and popular culture * M ...

to a team that kicked the ball from behind their 40-metre line so that it bounced in the

field of play A pitch or a sports ground is an outdoor playing area for various sports. The term ''pitch'' is most commonly used in British English, while the comparable term in American and Canadian English is playing field or sports field. For most sports t ...

before going into touch behind their opponent's 20 metre line.

Teams

Table

Play-offs

End of season mergers

Huddersfield managed to avoid relegation again despite finishing bottom due to the merger with Sheffield Eagles to form Huddersfield-Sheffield Giants. Also at the end of this season

and Hull Sharks were merged to form

Hull F.C. Hull Football Club, commonly referred to as Hull or Hull F.C., is a professional rugby league football club established in 1865 and based in West Hull, East Riding of Yorkshire, England. The club plays in the Super League competition and were ...

with no attempt made to maintain any association with Gateshead, a new

would be formed for the 2001 Premiership season.

References

External links

Super League IV at wigan.rlfans.com
{{1999 in rugby league