From the Championship to Super League champion: The rise of Wigan Warriors’ Tom Forber

Wigan Warriors young gun Tom Forber started the season on loan in the Championship: and finished it as a Super League Grand Final winner.

The 21-year-old became a Super League champion on Saturday night as he came on from the bench to help Wigan beat Hull KR 9-2 in the Grand Final in what was just his 11th first-team appearance for the Warriors.

Matt Peet’s side also achieved the remarkable feat of becoming the first team in the Super League era to win the quadruple in a single season.

“I’m buzzing,” Forber told Love Rugby League. “If you’d have told me at the start of the year I’d be playing in the Grand Final, I’d have said you’ve been dreaming.

“I’m just buzzing for all of the lads, they’ve worked so hard, just seeing how much they put into it everyday. I’m over the moon.”

Forber, who has been with Wigan since he was 16, made his debut for Matt Peet’s side back in 2022 but has had to wait patiently for his chance in the first-team, spending time on loan at Oldham, Newcastle Thunder, Widnes Vikings, Whitehaven, Wakefield Trinity and Barrow Raiders over the last three seasons.

The Warrington-born hooker played seven games on loan at Barrow in the Championship in the first half of the 2024 campaign before picking up an ankle injury with the Raiders.

But a couple of months later he found himself in the Warriors first-team after his good mate and fellow hooker Brad O’Neill suffered an unfortunate season-ending ACL injury: and Forber has really impressed since coming into Peet’s 17.

“I think I had seven or eight games at Barrow and I loved my time there,” Forber added.

“At the start of the year my goal was just to learn, play as much as I could and keep getting better every week.

“Luck has gone my way personally, obviously it was unfortunate that Brad got injured. I love Brad, I was gutted he couldn’t be playing because I’ve seen how hard he works and I can’t wait for him to get back playing but I’ve done that for him and for the rest of the lads. We’re made up.”

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Forber hails from Orford in Warrington and first picked up a rugby ball when he was just five years of age, and soon started his rugby league journey with Rylands Sharks, and he played there for a decade before moving to Blackbrook Royals when the Sharks team folded.

And impressive performances in the junior scene caught the eye of Wigan scouts, and he was rewarded with a scholarship contract with the Warriors when he was 16, with now first-team head coach Peet being head of youth at the time, overseeing Forber’s development.

And Forber’s says his family is his ‘why’.

“My family is a big part of my motivation,” Forber told Love Rugby League.

“I train very hard for my family, the amount of time and effort they put into me when I was younger, I’ve always wanted to pay them back.

“And just doing it for the lads around me. I see how hard the lads work and mainly it’s about just not letting them down and just wanting to do better for the group, and I think everyone has got the same approach – I think that’s why we’ve done so well this year.”

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And the Warriors – who are celebrating a historic Grand Slam this weekend – are constantly in pursuit of excellence: and their mentality is perhaps underlined by their work ethic and eagerness to seek improvements.

“Credit to the older lads and the coaching staff, they push us to those high standards and we’ve got a good work ethic,” Forber told Love Rugby League. “We all want to work together and work hard.

“The goal is just to get better, whether it’s Liam Farrell who has won however many games or the likes of me who has only played 10 games. We’ve all got the same mentality of just working hard. It’s worked well and we’ve come away with some silverware so we’re buzzing.”

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