LONDON BRONCOS head coach Mike Eccles has revealed that the club will receive around 12.5 points when the IMG grades are announced tomorrow morning.
Much has been made of the predicament that the capital club have found themselves in over the past year after being given just 8.07 points – which saw London in 24th place out of 36 professional clubs – in the provisional IMG grading scores towards the back end of 2023.
That effectively meant that the Broncos would be relegated from Super League regardless of their on-field success in 2024 – something which has not sat right with a number of people for a long time.
Ahead of the IMG grading score revelation tomorrow morning, Eccles appeared on talkSPORT’s Hawksbee and Jacobs Show yesterday afternoon, confirming that the Broncos had improved their score by approximately 50 per cent and that a Super League place is only two years away with more investment.
Eccles said: “We feel we’re probably only two years of good investment away from a Grade 15 which would get you Super League access, but at the same time, we are going up against time to get that investment in.
“I actually do think that in the long run, this (IMG’s grading system) could be a good thing for the game, but the timing has really hurt us at this moment in time.
“I feel we’re probably going to make the biggest strides within the grading. We were ranked 24th last year and there can only be 12 in Super League.
“We think we are going to get around a 50 per cent rise in grading, which is somewhere around the 12.5 mark, so we’re only around 2.5 points off an automatic return to Super League.
“Realistically, that would take around two years to get there. If we take a step back now it would take even longer, so the search for investment is crucial.”
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