There have been few stories in recent years quite like the rise of Hull KR from the doldrums of Super League to the sport’s biggest domestic game in only four seasons. And there are few players as eloquent, experienced and in such an ideal position to tell it quite like Ryan Hall.
Hall is not your average rugby league player. He is a qualified accountant, having completed a degree while playing at the highest level. He can solve a Rubik’s Cube in under a minute and is capable of playing several musical instruments. Plus, there is the fact that Hall has played an integral role in one of the most incredible transformations any club have seen for some time.
Super League’s greatest ever winger is not quite done at the end of this season: he will return to his boyhood club Leeds Rhinos in 2025 for one last dance at the age of 37. But given the Rhinos’ travails in recent seasons, this does feel like it could be the final chance for Hall to win a seventh Grand Final – and this one would be different to the rest for so many reasons.
For almost a decade Hall was a mainstay of a Leeds side who made winning the Grand Final their business. He and the Rhinos won six Old Trafford finales in nine years between 2008 and 2017, without losing a single one. This time he is aiming for victory with a side walking out in the Grand Final for the first time and who have not won a major trophy since 1985.
“The excitement level is up there with every other one I’ve played in,” he says. “I’m not going to say it feels the same because it’s got its own story there. Every win with Leeds was a different story because it was a different squad but this one has got everything in there.”
Saturday’s match will be almost four years to the day since Hall agreed to join a Rovers side a shadow of what they are now. In 2020 they finished bottom of Super League, winning three games all season and surviving relegation only because of Toronto Wolfpack’s off-field demise. But Hall was at a career crossroads after a failed spell in the NRL with Sydney Roosters.
He returned to England without a club for 2021 until a call from his former coach at Leeds, Tony Smith, persuaded him to join the Robins. Both he and Rovers were at a low ebb but he has since been one of the most influential figures in their transformation into one of Super League’s best sides. “I had nowhere to go – I hadn’t signed here when I was flying home from Australia,” he says.
“It was the human pull of this club that got me. Money is one thing, but put that to one side. And the supporters here are the heart of this working-class background and we like to represent them by being hard-working ourselves. When I joined the probability we could turn this around and be a good team was pretty low, but the possibility was always there.”
Hull KR’s young squad will go toe to toe with one of the greatest sides Super League has ever seen this weekend, with Wigan Warriors in pursuit of their own historical achievement. No side have won all four major trophies – the World Club Challenge, the Grand Final, the League Leaders’ Shield and the Challenge Cup – in a single season in the modern era, but Hall is proof experience is not essential on the Old Trafford stage.
He made his Grand Final debut as a 21-year-old in 2008 and in his words, albeit said with a grin on his face, “I scored a try and was unlucky not to get man of the match.” He is confident he will not have to prepare Rovers’ first-timers for the scale of the occasion – but given his seniority, Hall is now a player who will be vital in the preparation for Old Trafford.
“I remember my first time walking out in 2008 as a young kid, but you’ve got to use your experience from what you’ve built throughout the year,” he says. “I was around players who had been there and done it before so I’ve tried to be that guy this time.”
If Rovers do hold their nerve this weekend and end their 39-year wait for silverware, there is no doubting it would rank highly among everything Hall has accomplished in the game. It is a story few would have believed possible just a few years ago for both player and club.
“Sporting movies normally tend to be the best stories because they’re true stories,” Hall closes. “Normally if you watch a fantasy film you just think it’s too unrealistic. People usually say about sport: ‘You can’t write this.’ You can’t. It’s so unpredictable. This is a story that’s got everything.”
