St Helens 18–23 Bradford Bulls — Elimination Final, 2005 Super League Finals Series

Elimination Final, 2005 Super League finals series: St Helens 18–23 Bradford Bulls, at Knowsley Road, St Helens on 7 Oct 2005.

Sourcing caveat: St Helens' listed scorers (three Jon Wilkin tries plus three goals) reconcile exactly to their 18 points, but Bradford's scorer list does not reconcile to their 23-point total under either version found across sources: three tries plus three goals plus the confirmed Deacon field goal totals 19, and an alternative four-try version totals 25 — neither matches 23 exactly. The three-try version is used here as the more commonly repeated figure, but the exact scorer breakdown for Bradford's fourth-points-worth is unresolved and should be treated as approximate. Both lineups fetched cleanly with real, varied squad numbers and no suspicious sequential index. Bradford's numbering here is identical, unchanged, to the club's Elimination Semi-Final appearance the previous week — the third consecutive match with this exact numbering, and it recurs a fourth time, again unchanged, in the Grand Final. St Helens' lineup shows two clean, plausible changes from its Qualifying Semi-Final appearance: Jon Wilkin (12) moved from Lock to Five-Eighth, directly corroborated by this match's own scorer credit of three Wilkin tries; Vinnie Anderson (27) came into the vacated Lock slot from the bench; and Scott Moore (26), new to the squad this week, started at Halfback with James Roby (21, the previous match's Halfback) dropping to the bench. Every other St Helens number (Wellens 1, Gardner 2, Lyon 3, Talau 4, Hardman 20, Fozzard 8, Cunningham 9, Anderson 17, Gilmour 11, Bennett 15, Higham 14, Graham 19, Fa'asavalu 24) carried over unchanged, giving strong confidence in the fetch.