HULL KR chief executive Paul Lakin has revealed that the club initially approached Anthony Seibold to take over from Tony Smith before Willie Peters was appointed as head coach.
Ahead of the 2023 campaign, Rovers chose relative unknown Peters to continue the momentum generated by Smith in his final year at Craven Park.
The impact was stark, and in the space of three seasons, Rovers have made it to four out of six finals with Peters at the helm, winning the treble this year.
But it almost never occurred that way, with Lakin and owner Neil Hudgell initially trying to coax current Manly Sea Eagles boss Anthony Seibold to the club, who was part of the England rugby union coaching team at the time.
“Tony Smith was leaving at the end of the year and I felt we needed to look in Australia,” Lakin told the League Express podcast.
“We had a good friend of the club and somebody that we both knew very well that we were interested in appointing and that was Anthony Seibold.
“He was a former captain of Hull KR and was the defence coach for England rugby union at the time and we reached out to him.
“We had a couple of chats with him but he was a former head coach at Brisbane and he had aspirations of becoming a head coach in the NRL sooner rather than later. He wanted to wait for that chance which he ended up getting with Manly.”
However, it was on Seibold’s recommendation that Lakin and Hudgell first spoke to Peters – and the rest, as they say, is history.
“He understood what we needed – we don’t have a director of rugby so it would just be me and the head coach,” added Lakin.
“We need to get on, I have a strong work ethic and I wanted a head coach with the same work ethic who had coached from the pathways right the way up.
“And Seibold told me what Willie Peters was the man. He had been assistant to Seibold previously and knew that Willie was keen to have that chance over here.”