Almost four years to the day since Super League lost its London presence, there is a growing sense of something beginning to stir back into life in the capital once again. Covid-19 had a devastating impact on so many clubs across the sport, but arguably none more than London Broncos.
Mere months before the pandemic gripped the world, London were relegated on the final day of the 2019 Super League season. The parachute payment designed to help clubs adjust to life in the Championship was essentially swallowed up by costs surrounding the pandemic and as recently as last summer, the prospect of the Broncos being relegated to the third tier, League 1, was likely.
However, the Broncos survived what would have been a catastrophic relegation for not only the club but the sport’s hopes of a prosperous future in the capital. This season, they have continued to rebuild post-Covid and a run of five successive victories has London firmly in the mix for promotion back to Super League.
Defeat Bradford on Sunday and London will confirm their place in the playoffs, with many now tipping them as serious contenders to get back to Super League. That is sooner than anyone associated with the club expected given how bleak their prospects looked less than a year ago. “Since Covid, it’s the most stable we’ve been as a club,” says the Broncos coach, Mike Eccles.
“We’ve come a long way. We were in a bad spot last year, and while people think this sounds like a low expectation, just to be where we are now is incredible given how bad things were. We went from Super League levels of distribution to parachute payments that disappeared in the blink of an eye with Covid. From £1.6m to tens of thousands of pounds. It was bleak.”
With London now settled in Wimbledon, Eccles remains cautiously optimistic their fortunes have turned for the better. What is perhaps more impressive about their promotion push is that there is not a single player from the north in their squad, with a smattering of overseas players blended with a healthy crop of Londoners and southern-born stars.
“We’ve players coming from Medway, Ipswich … we literally cater for everything and everyone below the Midlands,” says Eccles. He remains adamant London’s academy, which has produced England internationals including Louie McCarthy-Scarsbrook and Dan Sarginson, is central to their plans for the future thanks to continued support from their owner, David Hughes.
“The expense that goes into that is enormous: what David puts into London having an academy would arguably get a Super League team through to a Challenge Cup final in terms of spend,” Eccles says. “David is pumping what other owners invest all over the club solely into an academy.
“We’re producing some quality players and it’ll be difficult to keep them if we don’t get to the Super League, but that’s the way it is when you’re 200 miles away from the heartlands. It’s awesome to see these lads not only just playing, but delivering, too. We’ve not got a single northern player in the team and that’s not by design, we’re just playing London lads on merit.”
Promotion this year would be an undoubted bonus ahead of schedule, but there is already a watchful eye to what happens next season and beyond. With IMG’s grading system replacing conventional promotion and relegation, if London don’t go up this year there is every chance they may get the opportunity via off-field metrics, as well as on-field performance.
“We’ve got to be better as a club and work strategically with the sport to get bums on seats, but it has been done before down here,” Eccles says. “But the landscape is changing, we don’t know what’s coming with IMG and we need to know how our money is best spent. Where is that resource best invested into? That’s something the club is looking into at the minute. My job is to keep on-field performances strong.”
In the week when the sport’s other London club, London Skolars, withdrew from the professional game, it feels like a pivotal time for rugby league in the capital. The next few weeks could prove to be decisive in terms of finally realising some potential.
