A rugby league team celebrated their Wembley triumph with a parade on a regional daily’s revamped bus.

Leeds Rhinos showed off the Challenge Cup trophy on the city’s streets on Sunday, after beating Hull Kingston Rovers 50-0 in the previous day’s final.

The famous cup was paraded aboard the Yorkshire Evening Post’s bus, which had been recently refurbished after the paper’s relaunch in January and is used to represent the paper at promotional events.

The victory parade came about after YEP managing editor Nicola Furbisher and Leeds chief executive Gary Hetherington discussed how the paper could combine its 125th anniversary celebrations with those of the club’s Headingley stadium, which both take place this year.

Leeds Rhinos players aboard the YEP bus

A special eight-page supplement marking the victory and parade was carried in yesterday’s YEP, which carried another pullout commemorating exactly 125 years since the paper’s first edition was printed.

The four-page supplement featured a picture of the first edition, as well as messages from the public.

Famous readers to wish the paper well included actor Matthew Lewis, who played Neville Longbottom in the Harry Potter films.

Rugby league legend Barrie McDermott and members of the Emmerdale cast also added their congratulations, along with best-selling novelist Barbara Taylor Bradford, who once worked as a journalist at the YEP.

She said: “Just imagine, for 125 years, people have been reading the Yorkshire Evening Post. What a record!

“I remember with great affection my days on the paper when, a s a young girl, I learned to be a journalist alongside Keith Waterhouse.

“Congratulations to all of you running the paper today and may you have many more years to come.”

Yesterday’s edition also carried the offer of a free pint of the YEP’s beer, brewed specially for the anniversary, for every reader.