“ONLY in rugby league, eh!” It’s a sentence I’ve found myself uttering several times over the last month.
The eagle-eyed amongst you will have noticed a slight difference on our 20 Questions spread in the last issue, when we put our questions to Konrad Hurrell.
Since launching this series of features at the start of the season, we have shown the player in question in their club colours, named the club at the top of the page and mentioned the club again in the “getting to know…” blurb. This was where we ran into a bit of trouble and simply had to mention, and illustrate, his Tongan allegiances rather than a specific club.
This particular interview was carried out at Saints’ pre-season media day back at the start of the year, just a month or so after Hurrell signed a contract extension at the Totally Wicked Stadium.
But, by the time we came to publishing it, Hurrell hadn’t played for St Helens at all – instead, he was on loan for Bradford Bulls, having also pulled on the colours of Halifax Panthers and Swinton Lions in similar deals.
Quite simply, we couldn’t attach a club to him – he was at Bradford at the time the magazine went to print, but there was no guarantee he would still be there by the time the magazine came out. He could have been back running out at Saints, or at a new club altogether, such is the madness of the current loan situation – and it could be about to get a whole lot worse.
Since 2021, when Covid was still causing chaos across the game, the minimum amount of time allowed for a loan deal has been two weeks, down from the previous minimum of a month.
At the time, the move was justified as it meant more teams could name full squads and fewer fixtures were hit with Covid-related cancellations. But what was not justified is that this minimum loan window has never been increased back to its previous level, and even more unjustified is the decision to allow one-week loan deals from 2026.
This essentially means that any player can play for any club on any given weekend, so what will be the point of squads and contracts for next season if players can simply be plucked from the rugby league merry-go-round?
Only in rugby league, eh!
Not that I am entirely surprised by the move, as it has already been happening throughout the game for some time now, and if you throw in dual registration, simply trying to keep track of certain players’ movements throughout the season has been enough to bring on the worst of headaches.
A prime example of this was seen when I made a rare trip to Odsal as a supporter to watch Bradford Bulls v Hunslet.
Named on the Bulls team sheet that night were Kieran Gill and Bailey Liu – not an unusual occurrence for two players who featured heavily in the first half of the season, but perhaps unexpected given just a week earlier they were both sent to Batley on two-week loan deals as they made their return from injury. They both turned out for the Bulldogs the weekend of the moves, but were then back playing for the Bulls with no explanation.
Thinking I’d be able to offer expert knowledge, someone asked me on the terrace how that had been allowed to happen – I simply said that I didn’t know, and followed that admission up with, “Only in rugby league, eh.”
I found myself uttering the same sentence a week later when I was back in work mode covering the Leeds Rhinos v St Helens Women’s Super League clash at Headingley.
It was a game that had everything, not least last-second drama when Faye Gaskin’s touchline conversion of Caitlin Casey’s try sealed a 22-20 win for the visitors.
It was a great advert for the women’s game and the perfect way to showcase it in front of the Sky cameras. But is that what got people talking afterwards? No.
A recurring theme of the press box chatter after the hooter was the decision to name Tara Jones as video referee – yes, the same Tara Jones who made 93 appearances for St Helens between 2018 and 2024, when she left to become a full-time match official.
During the game, she was called upon twice to make two big calls – one given as a try to Gaskin, the other ruling out a potential match-clinching score for Leeds’ Evie Cousins.
I am in no way questioning the integrity of Jones, as I do think her calls were correct and that she would have still made the right calls if they were in Leeds’ favour.
Gaskin clearly did ground the ball for her try, and the only person who knows for sure if Beri Salihi intentionally grounded the ball before Cousins got to it, or was trying to pick it up in-goal, was Beri Salihi. The referee sent it up to her as a ‘no try’, and there was no clear evidence to overrule his call, so the decision stood.
What I am questioning, however, is why Jones was even put in that position in the first place. Surely there were enough other match officials available that day to act as video referee. Doing any match officiating is a thankless job; we don’t need to make it harder for those who are willing to do it by placing them in even more difficult situations. I felt really sorry for Jones that night, it was almost a damned if she does, damned if she doesn’t situation.
Would any other sport allow a match official to take any role in deciding the outcome of a game involving a team they had played their entire top-flight career for? I very much doubt it.
Yet we allow it…. “Only in rugby league, eh”.
First published in Rugby League World magazine, Issue 511 (August 2025)