Three was the magic number at the 2025 Lance Todd Trophy celebration dinner this week

The 2025 Lance Todd Trophy celebration dinner took place this week.

Marc Sneyd received the Trophy from the 2024 winner Bevan French after his outstanding performance for Warrington Wolves against Hull KR at Wembley in June, becoming only the second player, after Sean Long, to receive Rugby League’s most storied individual award for a third time.

And the night was doubly historic, as for the first time the players of the match in the Betfred Women’s and Wheelchair Challenge Cup Finals – Wigan’s Grace Banks, and Jack Brown of Halifax – were celebrated alongside the Lance Todd Trophy winner.

The Lance Todd Trophy was commissioned eight decades ago by the Salford RLFC Players Association – now the Red Devils Association – to commemorate the unique contribution to the sport made by the New Zealander who was a member of the first Rugby League touring team of 1908, then stayed in England as a player with Wigan and Dewsbury, and became an innovative and successful Salford coach.

Billy Stott of Wakefield Trinity was the first winner in 1946, and the Red Devils Association have worked tirelessly to maintain the unique place of the Lance Todd Trophy in Rugby League and in British sport.

French was joined three fellow former winners at the 2025 celebration dinner, at the Worsley Marriott hotel which will again be the base for the England team during this autumn’s Ashes series: Andy Gregory, who received the Trophy twice in the space of three Wembley Finals for Wigan in 1988 and 1990; the remarkable Ray Ashby, who shared the Trophy with Hunslet’s Brian Gabbitas 60 years ago; and Denis Betts, a proud Salfordian whose Lance Todd success came in 1991, and who coached Wigan to their stunning victory over St Helens in the Betfred Women’s Challenge Cup Final earlier this year.

Banks’s brilliant individual try was one of the highlights of that match, and the 19-year-old was joined by her mother, Genna, the head of youth development for Wigan’s flourishing women’s and girls’ pathway, as well as Betts and the Warriors chairman Professor Chris Brookes.

Jack Brown returned to his native Halifax last winter after four years working in Queensland, and starred in the victory over London Roosters which secured the club’s first Wheelchair Challenge Cup since 2019.