Wigan Warriors 27–24 Hull FC — Qualifying Final, 2001 Super League Finals Series

Qualifying Final, 2001 Super League finals series: Wigan Warriors 27–24 Hull FC, at JJB Stadium, Wigan on 21 Sep 2001.

Sourcing caveat: Referee and full try/goal-kicker detail for this match could not be confirmed from reliable sources within this research pass — Rugby League Project's individual match pages for this season were inaccessible, and the only scorer detail found came from an unreliable AI-generated site that could not be independently corroborated. Reported as an open gap rather than an unverified guess. Lineups were sourced this round (round 41 of the lineups backlog) from Rugby League Project's own per-match page (rugbyleagueproject.org/matches/7725), found via a fresh season-summary browse rather than the inaccessible individual pages noted above at the time this caveat was first written — the season summary itself uses the roman-numeral `super-league-2001` slug, not the `super-league-vi-2001` form guessed as likely in this round's brief. Wigan's starting lineup and bench both needed a targeted literal re-fetch: the first fetch dropped Harvey Howard (20) as a starter entirely (leaving only 12 of 13 slots filled) and put Neil Cowie (10) on the bench instead; a follow-up literal re-fetch confirmed Howard as the second prop and Cowie on the bench, which then cross-matched cleanly against Wigan's other three 2001 finals appearances (this club's strongest anchor this round, appearing in all 4 of the 6 matches). Wigan's bench prints only 3 of 4 names on this specific page (Cowie, Denis Betts, Stephen Wild) — confirmed via a further targeted re-fetch as a genuine source-side gap, not a fetch artifact, consistent with several earlier 3-of-4 gaps already carried elsewhere in this file. Hull FC's lineup needed one re-fetch to surface a missing second prop (Luke Felsch, 10) that the first pass had dropped; once added, Hull's 13 starters and 4-player bench were complete and consistent. Coaches confirmed via web search: Stuart Raper (Wigan Warriors — Rugby League Project's own coaching-register page for the club gives his tenure as 2001-2003, and this is also the coach already named for Wigan in this file's own 2001 Grand Final context, so no transition risk this early in the season) and Shaun McRae (Hull FC — his Wikipedia biography gives an October 1999-2004 Hull tenure, fully covering this September 2001 match, reused from 13bd's already-established finding for the same coach one season later).