Sourcing caveat: Full try-scorer lists for both teams (beyond Poynton) could not be confirmed. Third-pass note (30 Aug 2026): both team lineups remain entirely missing. Wikiwand — which worked for the neighbouring 1961/62 and 1963/64 finals in this file — returned a 403 on every attempt this session despite spaced-out retries. Wikipedia's own pages are blocked outright in this environment. This session's web-search quota was also already exhausted before this pass began. No lineup added; nothing was fabricated. Fourth-pass note (30 Aug 2026): Wikiwand 403'd again, but individual-player Wikipedia biographies — checking the core of the same Wakefield Trinity side already fully confirmed in this file for 1959/60 and 1961/62 — confirmed six Wakefield positions specifically for this match: Gerry Round (fullback), Neil Fox (centre, 5 goals — matches team1_goals above), Harold Poynton (stand-off, try, Lance Todd Trophy — matches team1_tries/player_of_match above), Keith Holliday (scrum-half), Jack Wilkinson (prop) and Derek Turner (second-row, captain — a change from the loose-forward-captain role his own page gives him for the 1959/60 and 1961/62 finals). Gert Coetzer's own Wikipedia page additionally states he 'scored two tries in the 1962-63 Challenge Cup Final against Wigan' without giving his position that day; since this directly adds new try-scorer information beyond Poynton's own try, it is appended to team1_tries below rather than discarded. No Wigan player's Wikipedia page checked (including Eric Ashton's, whose 2 goals are already recorded above as 'Ashton') confirmed a position for this specific final. With six of Wakefield's thirteen positions confirmed (fullback, centre, stand-off, scrum-half, prop, second-row) but Coetzer's position and the remaining six Wakefield players, plus all of Wigan, still unknown, this falls short of a sourced full XIII for either side, so no team1_lineup or team2_lineup field is added, per this file's no-guessing policy — a substantial step forward from three straight blank passes, but not a finished lineup. Fifth-pass note (31 Aug 2026), dedicated to filling team1_lineup/team2_lineup for the first time: a rootsweb biography page of Harold Poynton (freepages.rootsweb.com/~wakefield/misc/people/hpoynton.htm) gave a detailed narrative of the match naming several more players, and these were then each independently checked against their own Wikipedia biography. Confirmed for Wakefield Trinity: Gerry Round (fullback), Neil Fox (centre — his own page states 'played as a centre' in this final), Ian Brooke (centre, try — his own page says 'played at centre and scored a try'), Gert Coetzer (wing — confirmed as a winger separately by a Wikipedia image caption on Billy Boston's own page: 'Boston tackling Wakefield Trinity player Gert Coetzer during the 1962-63 Challenge Cup final'), Harold Poynton (stand-off), Keith Holliday (scrum-half — rootsweb states he 'set up an early try for Mel Sampson'), Malcolm 'Mal' Sampson (prop, try — his own page confirms 'played at prop and scored the first try...the only Wakefield Trinity Forward to score a try at Wembley'; this resolves rootsweb's 'Mel Sampson' as a nickname variant of Malcolm), Jack Wilkinson (prop), Derek Turner (second-row, captain) and Don Vines (second-row — his own page confirms 'played at second-row' in this final). That is ten of Wakefield's thirteen positions confirmed by name; the hooker, loose-forward and second wing remain unfound (Brian Briggs, a second-row in the 1961/62 final, was checked and ruled out — his page has no 1962/63 final entry). For Wigan, individual biographies confirm four of thirteen: Dave Bolton (fullback — 'played at fullback in the 1963 Challenge Cup final for Wigan'), Billy Boston (wing, per the image caption above), Eric Ashton (centre and captain, per this entry's existing goal-kicking record and his well-documented career-long position, though no source found states his position for this specific match in so many words) and Frank Pitchford (scrum-half, try — his page states he played 'the 1963 Challenge Cup Final' at scrum-half 'alongside former Oldham teammate Alan Davies', and rootsweb separately credits a Pitchford try). Frank Collier's own page confirms he 'played in the...1962-63 Challenge Cup Final' for Wigan but does not give his position for this specific game (he played fullback/prop/second-row over his career), so he is not added to the lineup below. Roy Evans's own page explicitly lists his Challenge Cup Final appearances as 1959 and 1965 only, with no 1963 entry, ruling him out despite rootsweb's mention of a Roy Evans making breaks that day — either a different Evans or a rootsweb inaccuracy. John Barton, Brian McTigue, Trevor Lake and Bob Ogden were each individually checked as plausible 1960s Wigan forwards/backs and none has a 1963 final credited on their own page, so none is added. team1_lineup/team2_lineup below are added as genuinely partial (10/13 and 4/13) rather than full XIIIs, per this file's 'partial is fine, don't guess the rest' policy — jersey numbers are given only for the four positions that are structurally unambiguous (fullback=1, stand-off=6, scrum-half=7) since no source gives an explicit ordered 1-13 team sheet for this final the way several neighbouring seasons in this file have; every other confirmed player is listed with 'UNCONFIRMED' as the number and their sourced position instead, rather than guessing which of the two centre/prop/second-row/wing shirt numbers (3 vs 4, 8 vs 10, 11 vs 12, 2 vs 5) they wore.
Match report
Wakefield Trinity beat Wigan 25-10 at Wembley in front of 84,492, their second Challenge Cup final win in as many years. Stand-off Harold Poynton took the Lance Todd Trophy for a “magnificent interception try,” a spectacular individual score that headlined a comfortable Trinity win built on Neil Fox's goal-kicking (5 goals). Wigan's Ashton kicked 2 goals in reply, but Wakefield's dominance in this period — three Challenge Cup wins in four seasons — was underlined by this result. 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 62nd Challenge Cup final played, and, under the name “Wakefield Trinity,” the 5th 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.