Jack Farrimond’s Lance Todd Trophy triumph at Wembley has drawn comparisons with some of the game’s youngest Challenge Cup Final heroes, but we have to go back more than 70 years to find the youngest recipient of all.

WHEN Jack Farrimond scored two tries for Wigan in their Challenge Cup Final victory over Hull KR in May, he became the second-youngest winner of the Lance Todd Trophy for man of the match, aged 20 years and 216 days.

Actually, to be honest, I’m making a huge assumption about that because there appears to be no online list stating the age of each winner. Even AI didn’t know… The only way I could confirm it would have been to call up every Lance Todd winner, find their date of birth and the date of the Challenge Cup Final in which they won it, and then calculate their ages. And, frankly, even if my maths was up to it (it isn’t), I’m way, way too lazy. So, the huge assumption shall remain in place until next month’s issue of RLW when, doubtless, some better-informed student of the game than myself will have contacted the editor to rebuke me.

However, whether or not Farrimond is the second-youngest, there is no doubt who is the youngest Lance Todd Trophy winner. Huddersfield’s Peter Ramsden was celebrating his 19th birthday when he won the trophy in 1953. Like his Wigan counterpart, he scored twice in Huddersfield’s 15-10 victory over St Helens. Considering it was only the eighth time the Lance Todd Trophy had been awarded, Ramsden’s record has stood the test of time well: 76 players have won it, but he remains the youngest.

Huddersfield-born Ramsden had been offered trials at his hometown club at the age of only 16 and debuted for the A-team in September 1950. A year later, he scored a try in his first match for the first team, playing stand-off against Hull Kingston Rovers. At first, opportunities were intermittent and he’d only played nine first-team games when he won a Yorkshire Cup winners’ medal, playing right-centre in the win over Batley in November 1952.

But his performances convinced player-coach Russ Pepperell to make him a permanent fixture in the first team and move him to stand-off, where he was playing when Huddersfield arrived at Wembley to face St Helens in the 1953 Challenge Cup Final.

He had little idea beforehand of what fate, and a bruising Saints game plan, would deal him, but he soon found out. St Helens arrived as underdogs and came with the attitude, freely admitted in subsequent years, that the only way they could stop Huddersfield’s skilful, ball-playing team – which also included Fartown’s mercurial Australian trio of full-back Johnny Hunter, flying wing Lionel Cooper and metronomic goal-kicker Pat Devery, plus soon-to-be World Cup-winning captain Dave Valentine – was to batter them out of the game. And Ramsden, or more specifically his nose, was the first recipient of Saints’ sledgehammer tactics.

Don Gullick, part of a particularly tough Saints three-quarter line – which also included hard-tackling fellow centre Doug Greenall, famed for his notorious forearm smash that nearly caused him to be banned from playing in Australia – made contact with Ramsden’s face after only six minutes. Blood streaming from a broken nose, he was advised to go for an X-ray, but the 19-year-old was having none of it. He returned to the fray and, on the half-hour, cut through Saints’ defence to score a fine solo try.

However, Saints’ borderline illicit tactics appeared to be working, much to the annoyance of the booing crowd and watching media. “It was the day Saints became sinners,” wrote John Huxley in his history of the Challenge Cup. But their plan would backfire. “Their tactics were not match-winning tactics,” pronounced the Sunday Pictorial.

With the scores level and only five minutes remaining, Valentine broke the defensive line. At his shoulder appeared prop Jim Bowden who, after receiving the ball, looked to be held, but up popped Ramsden from the backfield to take a slipped pass, outpace the defence and score the match-winner. “Val drew the St Helens men before passing back to Jim, who sent me through. I was over – I hardly had to dive,” the stand-off said afterwards.

The Manchester Guardian wrote that “The crowd booed St Helens for some time and renewed their disapproval when the St Helens players were receiving their medals. At Wembley of all places, such a scene was regrettable – as regrettable as the tactics that prompted it.” Not that Huddersfield, Ramsden’s nose aside, cared much.

Ramsden spent pretty much his entire career at Huddersfield, save for 26 matches for York as retirement approached. He wasn’t the fastest stand-off, hence his modest 54 tries (plus two goals) in 246 appearances for the claret and gold, but he had a keen eye for an opening, allowing others to take the spoils. He would score another Wembley try in 1962 when Fartown lost to Wakefield Trinity before picking up a Championship winners’ medal the following week when Huddersfield gained revenge over Trinity. He died just short of what would have been the 50th anniversary of his Lance Todd Trophy triumph, aged 68.

My grandfather, who was at the 1953 Challenge Cup Final, was of the opinion that the Lance Todd Trophy success somewhat went to Ramsden’s head (Gullick’s forearm certainly did). He believed he became somewhat conceited and never fully developed into the player he should have been. Obviously, I cannot comment, having never seen him play, but after that promising start to his career, he never won county or international honours during his 14 seasons at Huddersfield.

Perhaps Jack Farrimond will not suffer similarly. He has a strong club, and a strong family around him, steeped in rugby league and its values. We can only hope that, in his case at least, even greater honours await.

First published in Rugby League World magazine, Issue 523 (August 2026)