Sourcing caveat: Try scorers, goal kickers, and the referee's name could not be confirmed for either team; the nature of the 'Tyrer incident' is referenced but not explained in available sources. Second-attempt research (30 Aug 2026) specifically targeting full team lineups: no complete, numbered 13-man lineup for either Castleford or Wigan could be confirmed. Wikipedia's rendered infobox would not yield player names through this environment's fetch tool, raw wikitext (action=raw / Special:Export) is blocked outright for en.wikipedia.org here, and a Wikiwand mirror attempt (which worked once elsewhere in this file, for 1963/64) returned only 403 errors for this URL. Rugby League Project's summary page for this final carries no team-sheet. The closest lead found was the Cas Tigers Heritage Project's official photograph of Castleford's May 1970 Challenge Cup-winning squad, captioned with 16 named players and staff (including Bill Kirkbride, this final's Lance Todd winner) — but as a squad photo rather than a stated starting XIII with shirt numbers, it doesn't distinguish who actually started this specific match from the wider squad, so it wasn't used to build a lineup field here rather than guess at that distinction. No Wigan source with player names was found at all. Third-pass note (30 Aug 2026): Wikiwand was retried and again 403'd on every attempt this session (spaced up to ~2 minutes apart), so it remained unusable here too, and this session's web-search quota was also already exhausted before this pass began. Both lineups remain entirely omitted; nothing was fabricated. Fourth-pass note (30 Aug 2026): Wikiwand 403'd again, but individual-player Wikipedia biographies confirmed six Castleford positions specifically for this final, largely by checking the same core of players already fully confirmed in this file for the 1968/69 final one year earlier: Alan Hardisty (stand-off, captain — his page notes he was 'replaced by substitute Danny Hargrave following a shoulder injury', giving a named interchange player), Keith Hepworth (scrum-half), Malcolm 'Mal' Reilly (loose forward — matches player_of_match above), Bill Kirkbride (second-row — matches player_of_match above), Mick Redfearn (prop, a change from his second-row role in the 1968/69 final already confirmed elsewhere in this file) and Clive Dickinson (hooker). Keith Howe's own page, checked as a plausible holdover from the 1968/69 side, lists only the 1969 final and not this one, so he is not added. No Wigan player's page checked yielded a positionally-confirmed name for this final. With six of Castleford's thirteen positions confirmed (stand-off, scrum-half, loose forward, second-row, prop, hooker) plus one named interchange (Hargrave), but the remaining seven Castleford players and 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 on this gap, but not a finished lineup. Fifth-pass note (31 Aug 2026): scorers found at last, on the Castleford Tigers official site's 'Cas' Cup Final history' page, which names Alan Lowndes as scorer of Castleford's only try ('to go over in the corner') and Mick Redfearn as both goal-kickers ('levelled the scores from a kick' early, then 'another Redfearn penalty put the icing on the cake' late) — the 3+2+2=7 arithmetic checks out exactly against the final score, and both named players were already independently confirmed as being in this Castleford side, which is a strong cross-check. The same page/search also turned up Colin Tyrer's own Wikipedia page, which states he 'kicked a penalty early in the game' for Wigan's only points (matching the note above that a 2-point return is a single goal, no try) before leaving with a broken jaw after a collision with Castleford scrum-half Keith Hepworth, and was 'replaced by Cliff Hill, the first ever player to be substituted in a Challenge Cup final' — Cliff Hill's own Wikipedia page corroborates this, confirming him as Wigan's interchange, replacing fullback Tyrer, as 'the first ever Interchange/Substitute to play in a Challenge Cup Final.' A Wigan players' historical page (The Riversiders, on Bill Ashurst) separately confirms Ashurst played second-row for Wigan in this final, wearing the same shirt number (11) as Castleford's Bill Kirkbride — a mix-up in the press box over the two number-11s is given as the Riversiders' explanation for why some sources credit Ashurst rather than Kirkbride with the Lance Todd Trophy. That gives three named, positioned Wigan players (Tyrer at fullback, Hill as interchange, Ashurst at second-row) where none existed before. On the Castleford side, individual-player Wikipedia bios added three more confirmed names beyond the fourth-pass six: Alan Lowndes at left wing ('played left wing in the 7-2 victory over Wigan'), Tony Thomas at centre ('played at centre in the 7-2 victory'), and Dennis Hartley at prop ('played at prop in the 7-2 victory') — all phrased identically to how this file's other same-era entries phrase confirmed appearances. A fourth lead, Derek Edwards, is weaker: his page states Castleford's confirmed 1969 fullback ('Edwards playing full-back in a 11-6 victory over Salford') 'also played in the 7-2 victory over Wigan in the 1970 Challenge Cup final... in the following season' — the position is not explicitly restated for 1970, only implied by continuation, so he is included below as fullback but with an UNCONFIRMED shirt number and the inference flagged in his position text rather than stated as flatly certain. Exact shirt numbers within a same-position pair (which prop is 8 vs. 10, which second-row is 11 vs. 12, which centre is 3 vs. 4) were not stated by any source found and are left as UNCONFIRMED rather than guessed, even though the 1968/69 final the year before happens to give the identical Castleford front-row/second-row pairing a specific 8/10/11/12 split — reusing that split without a 1970-specific source for it would be exactly the kind of convention-guesswork this file's sourcing standard rules out, so it wasn't done. Wigan's right wing, left wing, both centres, stand-off, scrum-half, hooker, second prop, other second-row and loose forward remain completely unidentified, as do Castleford's right wing, other centre and other second-row (i.e. whoever partnered Kirkbride there) — both lineups below are genuinely partial starting XIIIs, not full ones, and are left that way rather than filled in by guesswork.
Match report
Castleford beat Wigan 7-2 at Wembley in front of 95,255, a low-scoring, tightly contested final in which Castleford's forward strength again proved decisive, echoing their win the previous year. Second-row forward Bill Kirkbride was named Lance Todd Trophy winner. Contemporary press coverage (a Guardian report headlined “Tyrer incident mars Castleford triumph”) indicates a controversial refereeing or foul-play incident affected the game, though the specific details could not be confirmed from the sources available. 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 69th Challenge Cup final played, and, under the name “Castleford,” the 3rd 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.