St Helens 18–14 Brisbane Broncos — 2007 World Club Challenge
Reebok Stadium, Bolton · Attendance: 23,207
Data last verified: 11 August 2026.
2007 World Club Challenge: St Helens 18–14 Brisbane Broncos, at Reebok Stadium, Bolton.
Sourcing caveat: Try-scoring minutes for Boyd, Parker and Sculthorpe not found beyond Gardner's 70th-minute score.
Scorers
| St Helens | Tries: Gardner (2); Sculthorpe Goals: Sculthorpe (3/3 conversions) |
| Brisbane Broncos | Tries: Boyd; Parker Goals: Parker (3/4 conversions) |
Teams
| St Helens | Brisbane Broncos | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Paul Wellens | Fullback | Karmichael Hunt | 1 |
| 2 | Ade Gardner | Wing | Darius Boyd | 2 |
| 3 | Matthew Gidley | Centre | Brent Tate | 3 |
| 4 | Willie Talau | Centre | Justin Hodges | 4 |
| 5 | Francis Meli | Wing | Steve Michaels | 5 |
| 6 | Leon Pryce | Five-eighth | Darren Lockyer | 6 |
| 7 | Sean Long | Halfback (c) | Shane Perry | 7 |
| 8 | Nick Fozzard | Front row | Dane Carlaw | 8 |
| 14 | James Roby | Hooker | Shaun Berrigan | 9 |
| 10 | Jason Cayless | Front row | Petero Civoniceva | 10 |
| 11 | Lee Gilmour | Second row | Corey Parker | 11 |
| 15 | Mike Bennett | Second row | Brad Thorn | 12 |
| 12 | Jon Wilkin | Lock | Tonie Carroll | 13 |
| Substitutes | ||||
| 13 | Paul Sculthorpe | Sam Thaiday | 14 | |
| 17 | James Graham | Greg Eastwood | 15 | |
| 18 | Bryn Hargreaves | Ben Hannant | 16 | |
| 9 | Keiron Cunningham | Michael Ennis | 17 | |
| Daniel Anderson | Coach | Wayne Bennett | ||
Match officials
| Referee | Steve Clarke |
| Player of the match | Paul Sculthorpe (St Helens) |
Match report
Brisbane struck first when Corey Parker pounced after Ade Gardner spilled a Darren Lockyer cross-kick, and the Broncos led 8-6 at the break. St Helens hit back through captain Paul Sculthorpe, playing his way back from injury, and the sides traded tries in a tight second half. The decisive moment came in the 70th minute when Ade Gardner completed his double, gathering a Sean Long bomb to put Saints 18-14 ahead, a lead the English champions defended through a tense finish against a Broncos side featuring a young Darius Boyd. Sculthorpe's leadership and kicking earned him the player-of-the-match award, and the win completed a rare treble for St Helens after their 2006 Challenge Cup and Super League Grand Final triumphs — a high point for coach Daniel Anderson's 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' 2nd World Club Challenge title and the 15th staging of the fixture since its unofficial 1976 debut.