Wakefield Trinity 13-12 Wigan — 1945/46 Challenge Cup Final

Wembley Stadium, London · Attendance: 54,730

Data last verified: 11 August 2026.

1945/46 Challenge Cup Final: Wakefield Trinity 13-12 Wigan, at Wembley Stadium, London.

Sourcing caveat: Full try-scorer list for both teams and Wigan's goal-kicker(s) could not be confirmed from available sources. Lineup search (no lineup added for either side): Wikipedia's final-specific article does have a team-sheet table for this match — position codes (RW, RC, LC, LW, SO, SH, PR, HK, SR, LF) and squad numbers render — but repeated fetches, including re-phrased prompts asking for the section verbatim, consistently returned the position/number structure with the adjoining player-name cells empty or unreadable; a web.archive.org mirror attempt was blocked outright by this environment's fetch proxy. Rugby League Project's own final summary page gives only date/venue/attendance/score, no team sheet. Wakefield Trinity's official site returned a robots.txt fetch timeout on every path tried. No equivalent Wigan club-history microsite (of the kind that worked for Leeds/Huddersfield) was found. No team1_lineup or team2_lineup added. Fourth-attempt update: still no full lineup for either side (still no team1_lineup/team2_lineup added — Wigan's team remains entirely unidentified), but technique 4 (player-bio route) surfaced SEVEN of Wakefield Trinity's 13 players by name and position via their own Wikipedia biographies, each explicitly confirmed as having played in this specific match: Billy Stott (centre, captain), Johnny Jones (stand-off), Herbert Goodfellow (scrum-half), Jim Higgins (prop), Mick Exley (second row), and — per Wakefield Trinity's own official club-history page and a club heritage newsletter PDF, rather than Wikipedia — Ron Rylance (right wing, a stand-off by trade picked out of position) and Dennis Baddeley (left wing). Note a discrepancy: Billy Stott's own Wikipedia biography credits him with 'two tries, a goal, and the winning penalty' in this match, which doesn't match the '2 goals' already on file here and isn't used to change the existing team1_goals credit — the same biography's claim that Stott won the 'inaugural' Lance Todd Trophy for this game is already known to be wrong (see context above: the award began the following season), which casts doubt on the scoring detail too, so it's flagged here rather than acted on. The remaining 6 Wakefield shirts (fullback, the other centre, both props, hooker, loose forward) and all 13 Wigan players are still completely unidentified for this match, so no team1_lineup or team2_lineup is added. Fifth-attempt update: Ron Rylance's and Dennis Baddeley's own Wikipedia biographies were checked directly and independently corroborate the wing positions already recorded above from the club heritage sources — Rylance's states verbatim 'Rylance played on the wing in Wakefield Trinity's 13-12 victory over Wigan in the 1945-46 Challenge Cup Final' and Baddeley's states 'Baddeley played on the wing in Wakefield Trinity's 13-12 victory over Wigan in the 1946 Challenge Cup Final' — though, like the heritage sources, neither Wikipedia biography specifies left vs right, so this only strengthens confidence in the two names/positions already noted, without resolving which wing was which or adding any new shirt. Wikiwand mirrors of both the 1945-46 Challenge Cup and generic Wikipedia raw-wikitext/API routes for the same article were retried this round and all either 403'd or were blocked as cache-only by this environment's fetch proxy, so the underlying Wikipedia team-sheet table (positions/numbers render but names do not) remains unreadable. Further player-bio and general web searches this round (Trevor Midgley, Harry Murphy, and general 'Wakefield Trinity 1946 hooker/prop/second-row/loose-forward' and 'Wigan 1946 Wembley team' searches, plus a loverugbyleague.com retrospective and a Facebook post that both proved irrelevant or inaccessible) found no further Wakefield Trinity shirts and no Wigan players at all, so the remaining 6 Wakefield shirts and all 13 Wigan players are still completely unidentified after this fifth pass, and no team1_lineup or team2_lineup is added.

Scorers

Wakefield Trinity	Goals: Billy Stott (2 goals)
Wigan	No scorers recorded.

Starting line-ups haven't been added for this match yet — scoring, officials and sources above are sourced and correct; full team sheets are planned future work.

Match officials

Referee	A. Hill

Match report

This was the first Challenge Cup final played after the Second World War and marked the competition's return to a single match at Wembley Stadium, ending the wartime pattern of regional/two-legged finals. Wakefield Trinity edged Wigan 13-12 in front of 54,730 spectators on 4 May 1946. Wakefield's Billy Stott, who kicked two goals, was named the outstanding player of the match, though this predates the Lance Todd Trophy, which was not introduced until the following season. 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). Since 1946/47, the competition's individual award, the Lance Todd Trophy, has been presented to the final's outstanding player, voted for by a panel of media representatives at the final whistle — on several notable occasions the trophy has gone to a player on the losing side, an unusual honour that reflects the award's focus on individual performance rather than simply reflecting the final scoreline. This was the 45th Challenge Cup final played, and, under the name “Wakefield Trinity,” the 2nd Challenge Cup title for the club.

Round by round

Jump to round:

Round 1

Result	Venue	Attendance	Date
Bradford Northern 11–0 Hull FC	Odsal Stadium	—	1946-02-09
Castleford 10–4 St Helens	Wheldon Road	—	1946-02-09
Dewsbury 0–5 Hunslet	Crown Flatt	—	1946-02-09
Featherstone Rovers 7–10 Halifax	Post Office Road	—	1946-02-09
Higher Ince 3–30 Widnes	Central Park	—	1946-02-09
Huddersfield 3–14 Wakefield Trinity	Fartown	—	1946-02-09
Hull Juniors 0–29 Bramley	Coleford Park	—	1946-02-09
Hull Kingston Rovers 18–0 Langworthy Jrs	Craven Park	—	1946-02-09
Keighley 5–0 Liverpool Stanley	Lawkholme Lane	—	1946-02-09
Kells 0–3 Warrington	Recreation Ground	—	1946-02-09
Leeds 10–2 Batley	Headingley	—	1946-02-09
Rochdale Hornets 9–11 Barrow	Athletic Grounds	—	1946-02-09
Salford 8–3 Oldham	The Willows	—	1946-02-09
Sharlston Rovers 12–7 Workington Town	Mount Pleasant	—	1946-02-09
Swinton 5–4 Wigan	Station Road	—	1946-02-09
York 6–13 Belle Vue Rangers	Wigginton Road	—	1946-02-09
Barrow 21–5 Rochdale Hornets	Craven Park	—	1946-02-16
Batley 8–29 Leeds	Mount Pleasant	—	1946-02-16
Belle Vue Rangers 14–2 York	Belle Vue	—	1946-02-16
Bramley 51–3 Hull Juniors	Barley Mow	—	1946-02-16
Halifax 18–15 Featherstone Rovers	Thrum Hall	—	1946-02-16
Hull FC 2–0 Bradford Northern	The Boulevard	—	1946-02-16
Hunslet 0–2 Dewsbury	Parkside	—	1946-02-16
Langworthy Jrs 7–14 Hull Kingston Rovers	The Willows	—	1946-02-16
Liverpool Stanley 7–5 Keighley	Stanley	—	1946-02-16
Oldham 2–3 Salford	Watersheddings	—	1946-02-16
St Helens 14–5 Castleford	Knowsley Road	—	1946-02-16
Wakefield Trinity 5–2 Huddersfield	Belle Vue	—	1946-02-16
Warrington 27–0 Kells	Wilderspool	—	1946-02-16
Widnes 42–3 Higher Ince	Naughton Park	—	1946-02-16
Wigan 14–2 Swinton	Central Park	—	1946-02-16
Workington Town 16–2 Sharlston Rovers	Borough Park	—	1946-02-16

Round 2

Result	Venue	Attendance	Date
Bramley 8–2 Warrington	Barley Mow	—	1946-03-02
Hull Kingston Rovers 0–0 Salford	Craven Park	—	1946-03-02
Hunslet 18–2 Belle Vue Rangers	Parkside	—	1946-03-02
St Helens 6–13 Workington Town	Knowsley Road	—	1946-03-02
Wakefield Trinity 10–0 Halifax	Belle Vue	—	1946-03-02
Widnes 8–2 Leeds	Naughton Park	—	1946-03-02
Wigan 37–0 Keighley	Central Park	—	1946-03-02
Salford 38–6 Hull Kingston Rovers	The Willows	—	1946-03-06
Barrow 5–0 Bradford Northern	Craven Park	—	1946-03-07

Round 3

Result	Venue	Attendance	Date
Barrow 3–13 Wigan	Craven Park	—	1946-03-16
Bramley 5–11 Widnes	Barley Mow	—	1946-03-16
Salford 8–15 Hunslet	The Willows	—	1946-03-16
Wakefield Trinity 14–4 Workington Town	Belle Vue	—	1946-03-16

Semi Final

Result	Venue	Attendance	Date
Hunslet 3–7 Wakefield Trinity	Headingley	33000	1946-03-30
Wigan 12–5 Widnes	Station Road	36976	1946-03-30

Final

Result	Venue	Attendance	Date
Wakefield Trinity 13–12 Wigan	Wembley Stadium, London	54730	1946-05-04

Early rounds feature amateur and community clubs alongside professional ones; team names are linked only where this site has a team page for that exact club, matching the same safety-first approach used for the Final's own results table.

Sources

← All Challenge Cup Finals