Wakefield Trinity win a first Super League title, 23-10, at Old Trafford

Wakefield Trinity beat Warrington Wolves 23-10 at Old Trafford on Saturday to win the Super League for the first time. The Grand Final, the 29th, drew 71,728. Trinity scored 19 points before half-time and 4 after it. Warrington scored all 10 of theirs in the second half. Tom Johnstone took the Rob Burrow Award. Liam Moore refereed. Laura Wright sang Jerusalem. Sky Sports carried the match live.

The first half was a one-way file. Scott scored in the 11th minute, Isaiah Vagana in the 25th off a Johnstone pass, and Jazz Tevaga from close range in the 35th. Max Jowitt converted all three. Jack Sinfield added a drop goal on 38 minutes, and the interval score was 19-0. Warrington had not scored. A Grand Final deficit of that size at Old Trafford is rarely recovered, and this one was not.

The second half gave Warrington a route back that closed before it mattered. Arron Lindop scored in the 46th minute, and Irwin converted, to make it 19-6. Corey Hall of Trinity was sent to the sin bin from the 43rd to the 53rd minute, so Warrington had the extra man for ten minutes and took one try from it. Johnstone then scored in the 59th minute, with the sides level in numbers again, to make it 23-6. Lindop crossed a second time in the 72nd, unconverted. The final count was 23-10. Warrington's tries were both Lindop's. Trinity's four tries were spread across Scott, Vagana, Tevaga and Johnstone, with Jowitt's boot doing the rest of the damage.

The half-time split is the number that explains the night. Nineteen points in forty minutes, against a Warrington side that had reached the final, is a start Old Trafford does not often see from the side that left the regular season as the chaser. Trinity's four second-half points, against Warrington's ten, show a game that tightened. The sin-bin did not flip it. A drop goal before the break, worth one point, was the margin by which a later converted try would still have left Warrington short even if the rest had gone their way. It did not need to. Johnstone's 59th-minute try ended the argument.

Old Trafford has been the Grand Final's ground for this competition's modern run, and 71,728 is a full house for a rugby league decider in Manchester. The Rob Burrow Award, named for the Leeds player who died of motor neurone disease, went to Johnstone, who had a hand in the Vagana try and scored one of his own. That is a match award, not a season one. It sits on the night the club picked up a title it had not won in the Super League era.

Warrington leave with a final appearance and a second half in which they scored every one of their points. Trinity leave with the trophy, a 19-point head start, and a first championship. The open question for 2027 is whether a side that blew a final open in forty minutes can do it when the other dressing room starts better than Warrington did on Saturday. The 23-10 is on the board either way.