Category: Rugby League

The clubs are both in the Championship this season but one is minted and the other is playing with a shoestring budget

By No Helmets Required

To get to their Challenge Cup tie on Saturday, Salford fans had to find their way to the end of a dark, long and winding road to reach the lights of Chiswick Rugby. It was a metaphor for their last year. A few months ago Salford’s stay in Super League was ending in chaotic scenes and Hammersmith Hills Hoists were being crowned Southern Conference champions. And yet, when the clubs met by Barnes Bridge on Saturday night, many aficionados expected them to be well matched.

Hammersmith, formed by Aussie backpackers two decades ago and jokingly nicknamed after a washing line, had never seen a night like it: a couple of hundred Salford fans in red and white, chanting and banging drums, circled their 4G pitch to urge on their new team – a bunch of callow youths who would either rise to the occasion or crack. Many neutrals had come down to see a giant-killing.

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Former playing great starts new season as an owner in sport’s second tier aiming to rebuild club who would give British game a major lift if they return to Super League

Darren Lockyer has faced some monumental challenges for club and country but this year his trickiest task may be finding the opponents of his new club on a map as he takes on rugby league’s mission impossible.

Throughout his illustrious career, Lockyer faced Melbourne Storm, Sydney Roosters and some of the world’s best international teams. This year, Lockyer’s interests will be centred on places like Goole, Swinton and Batley after taking ownership of London Broncos late last year and attempting to make them a rugby league powerhouse.

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• Wane: ‘I believe the time is right to step aside’

• Successor likely to be part-time appointment

Shaun Wane has left his position as England head coach with immediate effect, leaving the national team on the hunt for a replacement for the Rugby League World Cup later this year.

“It has been the honour of my life to coach England Rugby League over the last six years, but after careful reflection I believe the time is right to step aside and allow the programme to move forward into its next chapter,” Wane said in an RFL statement.

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Community clubs were front and centre this weekend, with games from Bedford to Banbridge and beyond

By No Helmets Required

On a gloomy and bitingly cold January afternoon, it was a sight typical of many grassroots rugby league clubs. Midway between the M1 and the A1, a few hundred spectators bustled through the busy clubhouse to gather around the pitch. There was a bloke in a Wakefield away shirt, another in a Hull FC coat and someone wore a Castleford hat. The home coach was a Cas lad; the visitors’ delegation was led by a Warringtonian. There were folk sporting their allegiances to Salford, St Helens, Hull KR and Wigan too.

Muddy kids in rugby kit chatted excitedly. One boy asked his mate what all the fuss was about. “It’s the Challenge Cup. It’s like the FA Cup,” said his friend. I heard another explain the difference between union and league – “there’s no lineouts or mauls and they don’t have proper scrums” – which was a reminder we were in Bedford, not Bradford.

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• Up to 80% of league and 20% of union claims face strike-out

• Appeal over medical record disclosure denied on all grounds

Two appeals launched by the legal firm representing former players in rugby league and rugby union have both been denied in a significant blow to the ongoing legal action about brain damage caused by the sport. It means that after five years of legal arguments a large number of the claimants in both codes face the risk of having their cases struck out before they come to trial.

The appeal judge, Mr Justice Dexter Dias, ruled that the judge presiding over the management of the case, Senior Master Jeremy Cook, had been right to find that the claimants firm, Rylands Garth, had failed to fulfil its obligations to disclose necessary medical material to the defendants, World Rugby, the Wales Rugby Union, and the Rugby Football Union in one case, and the Rugby Football League in the other.

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England’s 2-0 series win in the Ashes was the perfect preparation for the World Cup in Australia next year

By No Helmets Required

England did win the Ashes last month. The wheelchair team’s 2-0 series victory in Australia went under the radar in the UK. With games played in the early hours and not screened on mainstream TV, the team missed out on the adulation that came their way when they won the World Cup in Manchester three years ago. “The forgotten Ashes? That’s sad if it’s true,” says the coach, Tom Coyd. “The NRL showed great engagement and we did loads of media there, but we were in a bubble and pretty disconnected from back home.”

England will return to Australia next year to defend their world title. The favourites will be expected to beat Wales, USA and Ireland in their group before facing the second and third best teams in the world – France and Australia – in the knockout stages of the tournament in Wollongong. The Ashes series taught Coyd vital lessons about how to manage his troops on the road.

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• Coach insists more opportunities needed for team

• Executive knocks back idea England will not be ready

England’s rugby league team will go into next year’s World Cup without playing a fixture for almost an entire year after it was confirmed there was no room in the 2026 Super League schedule to give the national team a mid-season international break.

Following their whitewash defeat to Australia in the Ashes earlier this month, England coach Shaun Wane – whose own position is under review – insisted that there needed to be more opportunities and priority given to the national team if they are to bridge the gap to the all-conquering Kangaroos.

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