Hurricanes are blowing in the League One play-offs for the first time, but it’s not down to climate change, just hard work and dedication by everyone at rugby league’s Midlands expansion team.
ANY new club entering League One in 2025 or beyond would do well to take a leaf out of Midlands Hurricanes’ book.
In the ten years since they arrived in League One, firstly as Coventry Bears under the ownership of Alan Robinson and latterly as the Hurricanes, the club have stuck to their slow and steady approach when it comes to their development as an expansion club.
Chairman Mike Lomas arrived at the club in 2021 as co-owner alongside Robinson, and together they rebranded the club to their current Hurricanes identity before Lomas took sole charge in July 2022. Greg Wood arrived as chief executive soon after, and when previous head coach Richard Squires left midway through 2023, former Bradford Bulls boss Mark Dunning arrived and, so far, appears to have proved the final piece of the jigsaw at the Alexander Stadium.
All three have worked together with the same hopes for the club’s future, and agree on the journey they need to take to get there. That now seems to have paid off, with the club picking up several impressive wins on the way to their first-ever foray into the play-offs.
While it’s Dunning who has masterminded the top-six finish on the field, he is quick to point out the team effort that has been involved in the club creating a little piece of history.
“I have been here for about 16 or 17 months now and from the start believed in the vision that Mike and Greg had,” Dunning, who is assisted by former Bulls colleague Leigh Beattie, told Rugby League World.
“It was always about continuous, steady progression. It was never about throwing heaps of money at it and doing things the wrong way.
“It was about building the game and the foundations of the club, and a lot is being done as part of that that perhaps goes unnoticed. Our women’s team have just completed their first season, which we are really proud of, and we’re always trying to engage with community clubs down in the Midlands to try and grow the game, so there’s a lot we’re doing off the field as well.
“When you look at the vision of the club and how we want to continually progress year on year, making the play-offs is certainly the first box ticked as part of that, but there is still work to be done.
“It was one of the goals we set ourselves, but we were also realistic and knew how big a challenge that was going to be. So for us to do this for the first time in the club’s history is a testament to everyone involved.
“I’m very proud and very humbled to be the one that has led them to this, but it is a team effort. The players in particular have been very good, the staff have been great and I’ve had really good support from the hierarchy as well.
“I honestly believe that I have got one of the best, if not the best, chairman and chief executives in the game alongside me because they just get it.
“They understand it and are really mindful of what’s around us, the challenges that will bring and how we can best deal with them.”
Any coach arriving at a club halfway through a season has a tough job on his hands, working with a largely inherited squad and with no pre-season behind him to implement his own ideas.
And while Dunning did face similar challenges, he was quick to try and turn them to his advantage ahead of what was always going to be a tough pre-season for all.
“Ahead of this season we all knew that we needed to take stock of where we were and that needed a boots-and-all review of the club, what we were doing well and what we weren’t doing so well,” continued Dunning, who led the club to three wins, including away victories at Oldham and Doncaster, in the nine matches he took charge of in 2023.
“We knew we had to implement change but that doesn’t happen overnight so much of the back end of last year was all about starting to do that as well as making behavioural changes, changes in how we trained, and things like that.
“Then in pre-season, we could really explode with that and go as hard as we could with it.
“We all knew we had to change a few things. We had to become more professional and diligent in what we did and we had to be more focused around what we did and how we did it.
“Pre-season was tough. We got the guys in at the start of November so it’s been a long old season for everyone. But it had to be that way so that we could implement the changes we needed to.
“We’d had a big change over of players, but doing what we did meant we got to the start of the season with a fairly settled group.
“We have changed morals, behaviours and standards and with it, that starts to bring a culture change. But again that takes time so it is still an ongoing process which will continue.”
League One is set to expand once again from 2025, with Goole Vikings accepted to join the competition.
So what words of wisdom can Dunning offer to any club looking to follow in the Hurricanes’ footsteps?
“Anyone who comes to the league with a new club has to come into it with their eyes open,” added the coach.
“Our club is showing that expansion works, and is good for the game when it is done right. So I would definitely encourage those people behind the new clubs to pick the brains of our hierarchy about how it all works because they have done it, and done it well.”
First published in Rugby League World magazine, Issue 501 (October 2024)
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