Championship Grand Final: Jon Wells on Toulouse or London Broncos aiming to join Super League in 2024

John Wells

Rugby league expert

The team that will replace relegated Wakefield Trinity in the Betfred Super League in 2024 will be decided on Sunday when Toulouse Olympique and London Broncos face off in this year’s Betfred Championship grand final.

Toulouse and London Broncos face off on Sunday for promotion to the Super League for 2024

On the eve of the Super League’s flagship event, with all eyes understandably on Wigan Warriors and Catalans Dragons, and all the intrigue surrounding it, it’s worth stopping to reflect on which will happen less than 24 hours after the lights went out at Old Trafford. .

Sunday October 15, 2023 is an important day for the two clubs facing off in the Betfred Championship Grand Final, as they do so knowing that whoever wins this match will enter a Super League and sporting landscape of approximately to make a seismic change.

This will be the last year of automatic promotion and relegation before the IMG ranking criteria comes into effect. It’s an opportunity to enter the elite division of a sport and put down roots, without spending the season with a looming trap door.

That these two clubs are Toulouse Olympique and the London Broncos is equally significant. In this country, rugby league is a sport that originated and remained largely confined to a corridor in the north of England. Fans are certainly passionate and partisan, but they observe that limited resources breed a broader, limited national and international appeal.

Here is my first declaration of interest: I am an expansionist. I want this game to enjoy the benefits of a successfully implemented and administered league, with a geographic footprint that will attract broader and more sustained interest.

This then needs to be leveraged to generate more commercial revenue in the sport – and don’t give me the tired “they don’t take any away fans” line. If you budget a club’s revenue stream partly based on away support, you are not focusing enough on attracting your own fans to your 13 home games per season.

But it is also a hugely important day for the sport as a whole – a threat or an opportunity, depending on your point of view – to properly facilitate long-term targeted development in two regions far from the heartland where rugby league is of significant importance. , for the greater benefit of the game as a whole, and hopefully being armed and responsive to the knowledge of past mistakes.

Jon Wells in action for Harlequins RL during his playing career

I write these words with a certain bias. I spent most of my playing career in west London, playing for the Broncos and Harlequins RL, who were renamed before the 2006 season.

During my time there I saw first-hand the amount of work that went into creating and developing the local teams at the time, Greenwich Admirals, Medway Dragons, West London Sharks, South London Storm and London. Scholars.

Make no mistake, there is real interest and support in this part of the world, and if you don’t believe me, go talk to Louie McCarthy-Scarsbrook or Kai Pearce-Paul. But it is also true that many mistakes were made there too: the nomadic nature of the top of this pyramid and the mistaken expectation that fans would follow are chief among them, the lack of connection between the top and the rest of this pyramid being another.

Similar sentiments apply to Toulouse. This is a large, cosmopolitan European city that has already had a fleeting taste of life at the top and will hopefully also have learned from its past mistakes, because it certainly didn’t pull the plug. best part of life in this city’s elite division. the first attempt in 2022.

Whatever your view on ranking or licensing (choose your favorite verb, but we’ll call it ranking here), there is only one team that has entered the Super League since promotion was reinstated and automatic relegation and which did not come down during the same season. . It was Leigh Leopards this year, and they achieved this with clear vision, foresight, planning and serious investment.

One of the benefits of ranking is that you are not judged solely on your performance on the field, you are not working against the clock, you are fishing in a limited talent pool whereas, at the time of your promotion, all the best players are already signed for the following season.

You can make longer-term decisions and balance managing any need for immediate success on the ground with a longer-term development and recruitment strategy. In short, it saves coaches and owners from having to roll the financial dice.

So, as a Yorkshireman who spent his youth on the terraces of Featherstone Rovers and Castleford Tigers and was fortunate to be exposed to the concept of rugby league outside of the north of England, May the best team win and welcome to the Super League. for 2024.

It will be very different this time.