WITH the recent proposals from IMG to ‘re-imagine’ rugby league focusing on five areas, the ears of a number of Championship and League One club representatives have been pricked.
One of those clubs is the Midlands Hurricanes, formerly the Coventry Bears, who were founded in 1998 as the Bears and then in 2021 as the Hurricanes.
After moving to a state-of-the-art facility at the Alexander Stadium in Birmingham as well as increasing interest in rugby league in the surrounding era, the future is bright.
Add into the mix that IMG are putting catchment as one of the main five grading criteria and suddenly the Hurricanes look even more attractive.
Whilst playing on the warm-up arena at the Alexander Stadium in 2023, chief executive Greg Wood has revealed that the club is hoping to move into the main stadium in 2024 as talks start with Birmingham Council.
“This year we are in the warmup arena but it is leaps and bounds from where we were last year,” Wood told League Express.
“We are starting talks with Birmingham Council to move into the main stadium next year which will be massive for us.
“In terms of facilities it is brilliant, it was around £80 million to build so there was no expense spared there by the council for the Commonwealth Games! So to have access to that is brilliant.”
Wood also hailed the increasing support for the Hurricanes in the local area with a record crowd in their opening home game against Cornwall at the Alexander Stadium.
“It’s been really strong, we’ve had a big uptake of fans just local to the area that are not necessarily rugby fans so it’s been really positive from the local community,” Wood continued.
“We’ve only played one home game but the crowd was bigger than anything we experienced last year and, potentially, Cornwall didn’t bring as many as the likes of Dewsbury will.
“Our home contingent has definitely grown in that first game and we didn’t really push too hard in terms of sales and numbers because it was that first game as we wanted to make sure, operationally, we had got everything sorted.
“We didn’t want to have masses of people, have teething problems and then for it be a poor event. People then don’t come back.
“The numbers will go up and up and the weather will get better and hopefully we will keep going the right way in terms of attendances.”
