Sourcing caveat: Try scorers for both sides could not be confirmed. A second-pass search (Aug 2026) found no Wikipedia lineup template for this final (its cells are blank in the source itself), but individual Oldham player biographies confirmed four Oldham (team2) players and one goal: Ernie Knapman's biography explicitly credits him with a penalty goal (added to team2_goals below, though this alone does not account for the full scoreline), and Sid Rix, George Hesketh and Bob Sloman are each confirmed via their own biographies. A third-pass search (Aug 2026) found the Oldham RLFC Heritage Trust's own match-report page for this final, which gives the referee as 'Rev F. Chambers - Huddersfield' and the complete 13-man Oldham (team2) squad in the club's own team-sheet order, taking Oldham from 4 to 13 of 13; it also confirms Oldham's 4 points came from goals by Knapman and Brough, so Albert Brough's goal is added to team2_goals alongside Knapman's below. That source lists players only by squad number (1-13) with no explicit position words, so the position label given for each of the nine newly-added names is inferred from the standard front-to-back team-sheet order (1 fullback, 2/5 wings, 3/4 centres, 6 scrum-half, 7 stand-off — this club's team sheets of the era list scrum-half before stand-off, the reverse of the modern convention, confirmed by cross-checking against Hesketh's and Reg Jones's already-independently-confirmed positions elsewhere in this file — then 8/10 props, 9 hooker, 11/12 second-row, 13 loose forward) rather than stated outright by the source itself, so should be treated as lower-confidence than this file's Wikipedia- or biography-sourced position labels. A fourth-pass search (Aug 2026, this pass) found Wigan's (team1) full 13-man line-up on the Ancient & Loyal club-history site's dedicated 1924 Challenge Cup page, given in the club's own team-sheet order as: Sullivan, Ring, Howley, Parker, Van Heerden, Jerram, Hurcombe, Webster, H. Banks, Van Rooyen, Brown, Roffey, Price — the same source, in the same list format, that gave Oldham's line-up exactly matching the club-verified team2_lineup order above, corroborating it as genuinely this match's team sheet rather than a generic squad list. Individual biographies then independently confirmed several of these players and their positions for this specific final: Jim Sullivan (fullback, and the match's goal-kicker per team1_goals above), Attie van Heerden (wing, confirmed as scoring a try 'behind a police horse that was on the field of play attempting to keep the... crowd at bay'), and Danny Hurcombe (scrum-half). George van Rooyen's own biography confirms he 'went on to win the Challenge Cup in 1924' with Wigan without detailing the match itself, and states his general rugby league position as second-row, which conflicts with the prop slot his name occupies in the Ancient & Loyal team-sheet order (position 10) — his position below follows the team-sheet slot rather than his usual position, flagged here as lower-confidence. Note also that Wigan's 6/7 pairing here (Jerram then Hurcombe, with Hurcombe independently confirmed as scrum-half at slot 7) follows the modern stand-off-then-scrum-half convention, the reverse of the Oldham-side convention documented above for this same match — evidently a club-by-club rather than match-wide team-sheet convention, so each side's ordering is treated independently rather than assumed to match. The two remaining Wigan names (Ring, Howley) plausibly correspond to Johnny Ring (wing) and Tommy Howley (wing or centre), whose Wikipedia biographies match the right career era and positions, but neither article explicitly names this specific final, so they are recorded by surname only per this file's convention for unconfirmed given names. Webster, H. Banks, Brown, Roffey and Price could not be matched to any independently-confirmed biography and are likewise recorded by surname only. No squad numbers are given for Wigan since numbered shirts were not yet standard practice in this period; positions are assigned by team-sheet order (1 fullback, 2/5 wings, 3/4 centres, 6 stand-off, 7 scrum-half, 8/10 props, 9 hooker, 11/12 second-row, 13 loose forward), adjusted only where an individual biography confirms otherwise as noted above.
Match report
Wigan beat Oldham 21-4 at the Athletic Grounds, Rochdale, in front of a then-record final crowd of 41,831 — reflecting the growing popularity of the fixture even before its move to Wembley. Wigan's goal-kicking, with three goals from a young Jim Sullivan (who would go on to become one of the code's greatest-ever kickers), underpinned the win. The scale of the attendance underlined the Challenge Cup final's status as rugby league's showpiece occasion of the era. The Rugby League Challenge Cup is rugby league's oldest and most prestigious knockout competition, first contested in 1896/97 under what was then the Northern Union. Its history has been interrupted only by the two World Wars, with four editions lost between 1915/16 and 1918/19 and one more in 1939/40; the finals played either side of those gaps, and during the Second World War itself, were sometimes contested as regional or two-legged fixtures under wartime emergency arrangements rather than the usual single showpiece match. For much of the competition's early history the final rotated around northern club and representative grounds such as Headingley, Fartown, Central Park and the Athletic Ground, Rochdale, before Wembley Stadium became the final's permanent home from 1928/29 onward (with a short break during Wembley's 2000-2007 reconstruction, when finals were staged at Murrayfield, Twickenham and the Millennium Stadium instead). This was the 24th Challenge Cup final played, and, under the name “Wigan,” the 1st Challenge Cup title for the club. The result is recorded in this site's full results table alongside every other Challenge Cup final played since the competition's 1896/97 inception, cross-referenced against the venue and attendance figures gathered for that table. As with all of this site's rugby league match reports, any statistic that couldn't be confirmed from an accessible source — a scorer's name, an exact minute, a goal-kicking split — has been left out entirely rather than estimated, in line with the sourcing standard applied across the Challenge Cup, World Cup, World Club Challenge and domestic finals coverage on this site.