St Helens 20–18 Brisbane Broncos — 2001 World Club Challenge
Reebok Stadium, Bolton · Attendance: 16,041
Data last verified: 11 August 2026.
2001 World Club Challenge: St Helens 20–18 Brisbane Broncos, at Reebok Stadium, Bolton.
Sourcing caveat: Exact try minutes not confirmed. The 2-try/1-try split between Joynt and Sculthorpe is inferred from the scoreline arithmetic plus a source note crediting Joynt with "multiple tries," rather than from an explicit minute-by-minute account — reasonably confident but not fully sourced to a play-by-play.
Scorers
| St Helens | Tries: Joynt (2); Sculthorpe Goals: Long (3 goals) Drop goals: Long; Sculthorpe |
| Brisbane Broncos | Tries: Berrigan; Lee; Meyers Goals: De Vere (3/3 conversions) |
Teams
| St Helens | Brisbane Broncos | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Paul Wellens | Fullback | Darren Lockyer | 1 |
| 2 | Sean Hoppe | Wing | Lote Tuqiri | 2 |
| 3 | Kevin Iro | Centre | Stuart Kelly | 3 |
| 4 | Paul Newlove | Centre | Michael De Vere | 4 |
| 5 | Anthony Sullivan | Wing | Wendell Sailor | 5 |
| 6 | Tommy Martyn | Five-eighth | Shaun Berrigan | 6 |
| 7 | Sean Long | Halfback | Scott Prince | 7 |
| 8 | Sonny Nickle | Front row | Shane Webcke | 8 |
| 9 | Keiron Cunningham | Hooker | Luke Priddis | 9 |
| 10 | David Fairleigh | Front row | Petero Civoniceva | 10 |
| 11 | Chris Joynt | Second row (c) | Gorden Tallis | 11 |
| 12 | Peter Shiels | Second row | Dane Carlaw | 12 |
| 13 | Paul Sculthorpe | Lock | Phillip Lee | 13 |
| Substitutes | ||||
| 15 | Tim Jonkers | Shane Walker | 15 | |
| 16 | Vila Mata'utia | Ashley Harrison | 16 | |
| 18 | John Stankevitch | Brad Meyers | 17 | |
| 19 | Anthony Stewart | |||
| Ian Millward | Coach | Wayne Bennett | ||
Match officials
| Referee | Stuart Cummings |
| Player of the match | Chris Joynt (St Helens) |
Match report
Played in wintry Bolton conditions, this was the first World Club Challenge decided by drop goals. Brisbane took a 12-6 half-time lead through Shaun Berrigan, Phillip Lee and Brad Meyers, converted by Michael De Vere, and looked set to control the match. St Helens, led superbly by captain and man-of-the-match Chris Joynt, who scored twice, clawed back through Sean Long's boot and a Paul Sculthorpe try before Long and Sculthorpe each landed a decisive drop goal in the closing minutes to snatch a 20-18 win. Brisbane players wore black armbands in memory of club co-founder Paul "Porky" Morgan, who had died the day before the match. The tight finish established St Helens as genuine world-title contenders under coach Ian Millward, against a star-studded Wayne Bennett-coached Broncos side.This match belonged to the modern, annual World Club Challenge era launched in 2000, pitting that season's NRL Premiers directly against the same season's Super League Grand Final winners in a single fixture. The fixture as a whole began as a single unofficial match in 1976 and was repeated only sporadically through the 1980s and early 1990s: it wasn't played at all in 1988, 1990, 1993, or 1995-96, the last of those gaps caused by the Super League War splitting Australian rugby league into two rival competitions. The 1997 attempt to relaunch it as a 22-club, two-conference "World Club Championship" — five Australasian clubs touring Europe and five European clubs touring Australasia simultaneously — reportedly lost more than $5 million and was shelved for three years. It returned in 2000 as the simple one-off match still used today, missing only during the brief 2015-2017 multi-match "World Club Series" expansion (when the marquee fixture still determined the World Club Challenge title, alongside several other NRL-Super League pairings played the same week) and the 2021-2022 Covid-19 cancellations and the 2025 withdrawal by Penrith Panthers. The result here was St Helens' 1st World Club Challenge title and the 9th staging of the fixture since its unofficial 1976 debut.