Wigan Warriors 22–6 Cronulla-Sutherland — 2017 World Club Challenge
DW Stadium, Wigan · Attendance: 21,011
Data last verified: 11 August 2026.
2017 World Club Challenge: Wigan Warriors 22–6 Cronulla-Sutherland, at DW Stadium, Wigan.
World Club Series — reduced back to a single match per club pairing after 2017.
Sourcing caveat: Referee confirmed 10 Sep 2026 via rugbyleagueproject.org's World Club Challenge results table (Robert Hicks), directly re-fetched by the assistant, closing a gap left open by an earlier research pass. Try-scoring minutes and any player-of-the-match award remain unidentified in sources found and are omitted rather than guessed.
Scorers
| Wigan Warriors | Tries: Burgess (2); Gildart; Burgess Goals: Escare (3 conversions) |
| Cronulla-Sutherland | Tries: Ramien Goals: Maloney (1 conversion) |
Teams
| Wigan Warriors | Cronulla-Sutherland | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 22 | Morgan Escaré | Fullback | Gerard Beale | 1 |
| 21 | Lewis Tierney | Wing | Jesse Ramien | 2 |
| 3 | Anthony Gelling | Centre | Jack Bird | 3 |
| 4 | Oliver Gildart | Centre | Ricky Leutele | 4 |
| 5 | Joe Burgess | Wing | Kurt Capewell | 5 |
| 6 | George Williams | Five-eighth | James Maloney | 6 |
| 7 | Thomas Leuluai | Halfback | Chad Townsend | 7 |
| 8 | Frank-Paul Nu'uausala | Front row | Andrew Fifita | 8 |
| 16 | Sam Powell | Hooker | Jayden Brailey | 9 |
| 10 | Ben Flower | Front row | Matt Prior | 10 |
| 11 | John Bateman | Second row | Luke Lewis | 11 |
| 12 | Liam Farrell | Second row | Wade Graham | 12 |
| 13 | Sean O'Loughlin | Lock (c) | Paul Gallen | 13 |
| Substitutes | ||||
| UNCONFIRMED | Joel Tomkins | Fa'amanu Brown | 14 | |
| 15 | Tony Clubb | Chris Heighington | 15 | |
| 17 | Taulima Tautai | Jayson Bukuya | 16 | |
| 19 | Ryan Sutton | Sam Tagataese | 17 | |
| Shaun Wane | Coach | Shane Flanagan | ||
Match officials
| Referee | Robert Hicks |
Match report
Wigan claimed a win over Cronulla-Sutherland as part of that year's World Club Series format, the last before it reverted to single fixtures per club pairing. Joe Burgess was the outstanding performer with a brace either side of half-time plus a third late try, while Cronulla had two tries controversially disallowed on video review, denying them a foothold. Oliver Gildart extended Wigan's lead before Ramien's consolation score. Cronulla coach Shane Flanagan afterwards described the contest as high-intensity but conceded his side were outplayed in the key moments.This fixture was the headline match of that year's expanded World Club Series, in which several other NRL and Super League clubs also played one-off cross-hemisphere fixtures the same week, though only this particular match determined the World Club Challenge title itself. 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 Wigan Warriors' 4th World Club Challenge title and the 25th staging of the fixture since its unofficial 1976 debut.