Wigan Warriors 26–14 Castleford Tigers — Elimination Play-off, 2002 Super League Finals Series

Elimination Play-off, 2002 Super League finals series: Wigan Warriors 26–14 Castleford Tigers, at JJB Stadium, Wigan on 28 Sep 2002.

Sourcing caveat: Goal-kicker totals (Farrell 5, Bartrim 1) are confirmed and reconcile arithmetically with four named Wigan try-scorers and two named Castleford try-scorers, but the exact per-player try-count split shown here (one each for Furner/Hodgson/Lam/Tickle; two for Eagar, one for Pryce) is the best-supported reconstruction from an inconsistently-extracted source rather than an independently confirmed scoresheet — treat as approximate. A first lineup fetch for this match returned suspiciously sequential 1-13/1-17 numbering for both teams; a targeted re-fetch with an explicit literal-transcription instruction produced real, varied squad numbers instead (e.g. Wigan's Martin Aspinwall at 20 (Centre), Danny Tickle at 26 (Second Row); Castleford's Waine Pryce at 20 (Wing), Mark Lennon at 22 (Halfback)), and these were used throughout. Wigan's numbers cross-matched consistently against its Elimination Final appearance the following week for every recurring player (Aspinwall 20, Radlinski 1, Connolly 4, Briscoe 27, O'Neill 6, Lam 7, Newton 9, Craig Smith 10, Furner 12, Farrell 13, Harvey Howard 17, Tickle 26, Sculthorpe 24 all identical), giving strong confidence. Castleford's bench genuinely prints only 3 names (Barrie-Jon Mather, Lee Harland, Nathan Sykes) rather than the usual 4, confirmed via a targeted re-fetch that checked specifically for a missing fourth name — this is a source-side gap, not a fetch artifact, matching the handful of pre-existing 3-name bench gaps already noted elsewhere in this file. No duplicate shirt numbers were encountered for either team. Coaches confirmed via web search: Stuart Raper (Wigan Warriors — his Wikipedia biography states he "remained with Wigan for a further two seasons in 2002 and 2003" after taking the job for the 2001 season, specifically noting his 2002 Challenge Cup win with the club, before being succeeded by Mike Gregory in July 2003 — meaning Gregory, cited for Wigan in 13bc for the following season, had not yet taken over at this point) and Graham Steadman (Castleford Tigers — Rugby League Project's own 2002 Castleford season summary lists him as coach for all 33 matches that year, and his Wikipedia biography confirms he was "made full-time coach... towards the end of 2001" and "took the club to the top 6 playoffs in 2002").