STEFAN Ratchford became only the third Wire player to win the Harry Sunderland Trophy when he was named man of the match in Saturday’s Super League Grand Final.

He follows in the footsteps of Barry Philbin, who collected the award at the end of the 1973-74 Club Championship Final win against St Helens, and Les Boyd, who was the star man in Warrington’s 1985-86 Premiership Trophy Final success against Halifax.

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Ratchford, named players’ player of the year and the recipient of the Guardian readers’ award, is only the third player to win the Harry Sunderland Trophy on the losing side in a Super League Grand Final.

The others were Bradford Bulls players Henry Paul in 1999 and Paul Deacon in 2002.

“It’s a massive honour and a massive privilege to be selected as a man of the match in a Grand Final, in a game of this magnitude,” said the Wire and England full-back.

“But I’m sure I’m not alone in people who have lost and won the man of the match saying that they’d happily swap it for a winner’s ring in a matter of seconds.

“It’s nice to get the award but it’s disappointing and frustrating to not get the right result.”

For Ratchford and a number of his teammates in primrose and blue it was a fourth Grand Final loss in seven years.

“I think the feeling after losing gets worse,” he said.

“In the previous Grand Finals, in 2012 we weren’t quite good enough, in 2013 we were in a good position and then picked up a few injuries.

“I think this Grand Final was probably the game that we’ve created the most opportunities to score points and we couldn’t quite execute.

“It’s frustrating on that part but on the flip side you’ve got to give credit to Wigan because defensively they were unbelievable.

“There was a couple of times I thought Tommy Lineham might have been in, or Charners (Josh Charnley) in the opposite corner, but before we knew it they had three or four bodies in front.

“Wigan, defensively, are an unbelievable team and on Saturday night they took it up another level.”

Ratchford said he and his teammates must feel proud of what has been achieved this season.

“If you look at where we were 12 months ago, playing Championship teams, we were fighting relegation,” he said.

“I think even the way we started this year if you’d said in March that Warrington Wolves would be Challenge Cup Finalists, top four of Super League and Grand Finalists, people would have laughed you off the park.

“We’ve got to be proud about how far we’ve come as a team and as a squad over the past 12 months.

“But we weren’t quite good enough on Saturday night. There’s a lot of positives over the past 12 months and hopefully we can build again on that in the off-season and pre-season and get ready for another crack at it next year.”

Ratchford says he apportions no blame on the Grand Final loss to referee Robert Hicks’ decision-making over two incidents involving Wigan full-back Sam Tomkins that could have been punished by yellow or even red cards.

“Everyone’s going to have an opinion on it but it’s not for me to say,” he said.

“At the end of the day he didn’t get a yellow card and that’s it.

“There was an incident in the second half with Charners where the ref said it was a similar thing.

“That’s all ifs and buts. We’re not going to look at them instances and say that’s what cost us the Grand Final.

“We created opportunities after that and we didn’t execute. Some of it’s down to us and our poor execution and some of it’s down to Wigan’s outstanding defence.”

Ratchford will join up with England later this week to prepare for a three-match Test series with New Zealand, who defeated world champions Australia at the weekend.

He wore the England number one shirt during the mid-season international against the Kiwis in Denver, America.

“It’s straight back on the horse,” said Ratchford.

“If we can go up against New Zealand and come away with a Test series victory I suppose that will ease some of the pain of the two losses in finals this year but it’s not going to mask it fully.

“But it would be nice to finish the season off with hopefully some representative honours and hopefully a series win against the Kiwis.”

England’s first Test against New Zealand takes place at the KCOM Stadium in Hull on October 27.