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Continue reading...Toronto Wolfpack players finally paid salaries after five-year battle
Canadian club folded during Covid-19 pandemic in 2020
Players receive around £750,000 in unpaid income
Players from the former Super League club Toronto Wolfpack have finally been paid around £750,000 in unpaid salaries following a five-year legal battle, the Guardian can reveal.
The Wolfpack folded in 2020 during the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic leaving their playing squad – which included the likes of Sonny Bill Williams – unemployed and without a contract. Some of those players were able to source deals for 2021 and continue playing but others retired from the sport altogether and had to take jobs outside rugby league to make ends meet.
Continue reading...‘Counterfeiting a code’: NRL announces 10-year ban for players who engage with R360
Agents who take players to unregistered competitions also face ban
Rules will ‘protect future of the game’, ARLC chair Peter V’landys says
The NRL has vowed to ban any player who leaves the code for R360 for 10 years, as it fights to fend off the threat of the breakaway rugby competition.
In a statement on Wednesday, the NRL also threatened to ban any agent if they take a player to the rebel competition.
Continue reading...‘Not difficult’: Wane explains omission of Jake Connor from England Ashes squad
Leeds half-back won the 2025 Man of Steel award
First Test against Australia at Wembley on 25 October
The England head coach, Shaun Wane, has said the decision to leave Super League’s Man of Steel, Jake Connor, out of his squad for the Ashes was “not really difficult”. He added that he does not understand the obsession surrounding the exile of the Leeds Rhinos half-back.
Connor is by far the most notable omission from the 24-man squad to take on Australia in the first Ashes series since 2003. It begins on 25 October at Wembley, with Tests at Everton and Headingley to follow on successive Saturdays. There are a number of surprise inclusions, including a returnfor Hull KR’s Joe Burgess after his two-try performance in the Super League Grand Final on Saturday. The winger has been out of the national side for a decade.
Continue reading...Carter Gordon returns to Wallabies squad after early end to NRL stint
Former Gold Coast Titan flyhalf lured back by Rugby Australia
Coach Joe Schmidt selects 34 players for Tests starting 25 October
Carter Gordon could be the Wallabies’ flyhalf again by the end of the month after securing a release from his NRL deal to be part of Australia’s spring tour.
The 24-year-old’s move to the Queensland Reds was confirmed on Monday after Rugby Australia secured a release from the second and final year of his Gold Coast contract.
Continue reading...Hull KR aim for more while triumph brings hope for all Super League teams
Unpredictability and fresher feel has been apparent in Super League and whets the appetite for England’s home Tests against Australia
For the first time in two decades Super League woke up on Sunday morning with a name other than Wigan Warriors, St Helens or Leeds Rhinos as its champions. Hull KR are the first new winners of the competition since 2004, and only the fifth in history to be crowned at all.
For the Robins, this is a watershed moment. Without a major trophy in 40 years before this season, they have now completed an historic treble in 2025 and are arguably Super League’s premier club side. But for the wider competition as a whole, their success could not have come at a better time.
Continue reading...Chiefs or Pythons? NRL’s 19th team name revealed by PNG prime minister James Marape
Public naming competition had more than 20,000 submissions
Rugby league franchise joining in 2028 will be known as Chiefs
Papua New Guinea’s new team to enter the NRL in 2028 will be known as the Chiefs, the country’s prime minister, James Marape, has announced.
The club’s name was unveiled at Santos National Football Stadium before kick-off in the men’s annual match between the Australian Prime Minister’s XIII and their Pacific neighbour on Sunday.
Continue reading...Hull KR 24-6 Wigan Warriors: Super League Grand Final – as it happened
A dominant display led by Mikey Lewis secured an astonishing treble for Hull KR, denying Wigan a three-peat
“Being the most consistent team [in regular season] means nothing today,” the Hull KR coach, Willie Peters, tells Sky Sports. “It’s about today. Winning the moment. Today’s a big moment, and we need to win it.
“We’ve got to be switched on for 80 minutes against this team. I’ve got a lot of faith in the group. Now it’s about going out and expressing themselves.”
Continue reading...Exeter’s Brown-Bampoe in the fast lane for great things for club and country
Wing has a masters in finance but has England ambitions and takes inspiration from Manny Feyi-Waboso
In his quieter moments Paul Brown-Bampoe has a recurring daydream. A packed Twickenham international stage, with him playing on one wing for England and his Exeter teammate Manny Feyi-Waboso on the other. “Of course I’ve imagined that day,” he says, smiling broadly. If the double-barrelled whizz-kids continue their current form it might just happen sooner rather than later.
Admittedly it is early days in the new Prem season but something potentially thrilling is stirring out west. Feyi-Waboso, after an injury-curtailed year, is back fit and firing with five tries in his opening two league games. The top-drawer Wallaby Len Ikitau has arrived to link up with Henry Slade in the Chiefs midfield and also lurking with intent is the 23-year-old Brown-Bampoe, a serious athlete with numerous strings to his bow.
Continue reading...Northampton welcome back Lions – and not a day too soon as Leicester loom
Phil Dowson has Fin Smith, Henry Pollock, Alex Mitchell and Tommy Freeman available again and eager to make up for last season’s 33-0 defeat
It does not feel like a coincidence that the Prem’s first derby weekend of the season marks the return of most British & Irish Lions players and for Northampton it is a welcome boost indeed. Phil Dowson has Fin Smith, Henry Pollock, Alex Mitchell and Tommy Freeman back at his disposal as they seek to avenge last season’s 33-0 home drubbing at the hands of fierce rivals Leicester.
For Saturday’s game Dowson has selected Smith, Mitchell and Freeman to start while Pollock is named on the bench and across the league a number of other Lions return now that the mandatory rest period has ended. Marcus Smith starts for Harlequins against Saracens, who field Ben Earl from the start. Jamie George is on the bench but Maro Itoje is still considered “unavailable”. Bath are led by Finn Russell in their West Country encounter with Gloucester with Will Stuart also starting. Ellis Genge lines up for injury-hit Bristol against Exeter.
Continue reading...Wigan eye third consecutive Super League title and place among all-time greats
Hull KR have taken two of Wigan’s crowns this year and stand in the way of Matt Peet’s team at Old Trafford
It is not just the walls of Wigan Warriors’ plush Robin Park training complex that are draped with the historic moments of rugby league’s most famous club. Almost everywhere you turn in the town, there is a nod to the great players and triumphs Wigan recalls with immense pride.
The modern era has not exactly been short on supply when it comes to similar memorable moments but in terms of teams and players that will stand the test of time, it is not unreasonable to suggest this current incarnation of Wigan Warriors is on the verge of entering the pantheon of the club’s all-time greats.
Continue reading...Sports quiz of the week: Cole Palmer, Women’s Cricket World Cup and Cape Verde
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Continue reading...Mr Hull KR: real-life hero of Post Office IT scandal bankrolls club to verge of treble glory
Owner Neil Hudgell is as proud of his players’ connection to the community as he is of the club’s success as they face Wigan in Saturday’s Grand Final
Neil Hudgell has witnessed highs this summer he and a generation of Hull KR supporters perhaps thought they would never get to experience, but even in these most euphoric of times the low moments are never far from the forefront of his mind.
There have been plenty of those during his 20 years as owner of his boyhood club. Flirtations with administration, relegation from Super League in the most dramatic of circumstances in 2016 courtesy of an extra-time defeat to Salford and a 50-0 loss to Leeds in the 2015 Challenge Cup final that Hudgell ranks as his lowest ebb.
Continue reading...Senior rugby figures believe rebel R360 league all but dead after unions’ statement
Players who sign up would be ineligible for national sides
Proposed event yet to be sanctioned by World Rugby
Senior global rugby figures believe the rebel R360 venture is all but dead unless it can find a way to appease the world’s top nations. In a dramatic move the leading unions collectively made clear this week that players involved in the R360 competition would be ineligible for their national sides and have warned them to treat offers with “extreme caution”.
Privately there is a widespread view that those pushing the R360 concept, fronted by the England World Cup winner Mike Tindall, now face a struggle to get the project off the ground if the world’s top male and female players are required to forfeit their international futures to join the rebel league.
Continue reading...‘I stood on the shoulders of giants’: Josh Walters on scoring the winning try in the Super League Grand Final
Not only did Walters score the key try for Leeds in 2015 – he did it again in the Scottish Grand Final a decade later
Ten years ago this week Josh Walters took a simple pass and plunged over the six-yard line at Old Trafford to score the final try in the Super League Grand Final as Leeds secured their seventh title. There were 73,512 fans inside the stadium and a couple of million more watching at home. He humbly plays down his role in the treble-clinching triumph. “I never say it was the winning try because Kev [Sinfield] still had to kick the two points – my try brought us level and there was still 15 minutes left.”
That was his first winning try in a Grand Final. The second came this summer in Scotland, watched by a few dozen spectators at Penicuik Rugby Club. In contrast to his supporting role at Old Trafford, Walters was West End’s driving force for the whole match. The dramatic golden-point victory brought West End Warriors their first title in their debut season, Walters breaking from halfway to seal a 34-30 win over Edinburgh Eagles. “We wouldn’t have been in that position if it hadn’t been for me,” says the gently spoken Walters. “I was about to score earlier and someone knocked the ball out of my hands. So I had to make up for that.”
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