FRUSTRATED coach Mike Eccles is calling for Super League bosses to sit down with London Broncos owner David Hughes and find a way forward for the club.
After last year’s against-the-odds promotion to Super League, London face an immediate return to the Championship under the incoming IMG club-grading system.
And Eccles fears that will leave them in the Rugby League wilderness, with no realistic chance of returning to the top flight, therefore putting a question mark against the viability of the capital’s only remaining professional club after the demise of London Skolars.
The Broncos have won plenty of admirers with a string of gutsy performances by a squad put together later than their Super League rivals and in the knowledge that there was little prospect of retaining that status.
And director of rugby and performance Eccles, who has been with the club in one capacity or another since 2012, accepts Hughes must now weigh up how much more money to put in going forward.
“These are uncertain times, because the minute we are back in the Championship, external investment drops significantly,” said Eccles.
“I’m contracted for next year but at this stage uncertain about how the club or squad will look, because a lot of things are up in the air.
“What I do know is that the criteria for getting back into Super League don’t work for a non-heartland club like us.
“We put a lot of groundwork in to get to the position of winning a Super League place on playing merit, producing our own players and keeping them at the club, but we’ve had to drop the Academy.
“And with the grading as it is, we are nowhere near Super League, and going forward, it will be very hard to achieve the criteria needed, as it will be for most clubs who aren’t already there or haven’t been there for a period in the fairly recent past.
“It’s been a pleasure to bring Super League back to London, and I think there is a view that Rugby League benefits from having a team in the city.
“But we are different to other clubs in a number of ways, and I think the people running Super League need to sit down with David and work out a strategy for London Broncos, because for our business model to work properly, we need to be in Super League.
“We have no issue with making improvements and accept the importance of doing that, but those KPI’s (key performance indicators), for instance increasing attendances and putting the Academy back together, must be reasonable and achievable.”
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