AFTER watching Wigan put Leeds Rhinos to the sword in front of a packed house at Headingley on Saturday night, I think it’s a valid question to ask whether any other team would be capable of beating them.
No other club can compete with Wigan when it comes to continuous high standards, as Leeds discovered at Headingley.
Occasionally some other clubs come close to Wigan, or even beat them, as Hull KR did in 2025.
But it doesn’t take long for Wigan to re-assert their dominance, as we have seen this season.
Can any other club hope to give Wigan a game?
It’s hard to imagine the Catalans Dragons doing so on Friday night, given their recent performances, culminating in a home defeat by York on Saturday.
And after that Wigan will have two more games, if we assume they will get to Old Trafford.
The only negative about their brilliant performances is the thought that the Grand Final attendance may be affected by the belief that Wigan will win convincingly.
Super League Minus
Last Monday I contemplated heading to Warrington for the 1895 Cup Final between London Broncos and Widnes Vikings.
Given that Monday is the only day of the week that I don’t normally spend on League Express business, I instead decided to watch the game on the SuperLeague+ App.
I have a membership of the App so I assumed it would be easy to log in and watch the game on my computer.
I shouldn’t have been so naive.
Like many others who complained on social media, I couldn’t log onto the broadcast of the match. I eventually gave up and had to settle for watching the highlights of the game later in the day.
To judge from the highlights, the sides were evenly matched in the first half, while the Broncos pulled away in the second.
The vast majority of a crowd of almost 5,000 inevitably came from Widnes, given its proximity to Warrington, but there were probably around 400 London supporters there too. Given that the Broncos were scoring most of the tries, their supporters featured on a lot of the highlights of the game. I would love to think that their number will grow over the coming years.
The Broncos have now won two trophies this year (the League Leaders’ Shield and the 1895 Cup) and it remains to be seen whether they will win the Championship Grand Final too. They will have some serious challengers for that trophy, particularly Doncaster if we look at the way they demolished Barrow on Sunday, winning 72-0 with twelve tries, all converted by Connor Robinson, who was on his way to creating a new world record for the number of consecutive successful kicks at goal.
The previous record was 41 but he has raised it to 52.
My sincere congratulations to him.
But of course the question now is whether the Broncos will be elevated to Super League in 2027.
I don’t think they will be if they have to rely on the IMG gradings system.
Instead I think they will only be accommodated in Super League if the competition comprises 15 clubs in 2027.
In my view that is what should happen.
But I’m not sure the existing Super League clubs will vote for it.
What might sway them is if the Broncos offer to forgo a distribution payment next season.
But Darren Lockyer has made it clear that he would not be prepared to accept that.
I think the Super League clubs should recognise that having London Broncos in the competition next year will be a great potential benefit to Super League, even if it means that the clubs won’t have home and away fixtures against every other club in the competition.
One clear benefit of 15 clubs, incidentally, is that every club would have two bye weekends.
The club that wins the Grand Final this year could have one of its bye weekends doubling up as the World Club Challenge weekend, so cutting out the need for a match to be postponed and replayed later in the season, as we saw recently with Hull KR and Warrington.
I would strongly advise the clubs to go for that.
And perhaps the solution to the problem of the distribution of funds is to ask the NRL to allocate the same amount of funding to the Broncos that the other clubs will receive from the RFL.
An Arrow to the heart
Anyone who tuned in to South Sydney’s game against Sydney Roosters on Friday couldn’t have failed to be deeply moved by the sight of Jai Arrow coming onto the pitch to make his 100th appearance for the Rabbitohs.
Arrow is suffering from the early stages of motor neurone disease and his entry to the field was accompanied by “You’ll Never Walk Alone” as he line up for the kick-off before making way for his team-mate Cody Walker.
Just like the late Rob Burrow, Jai Arrow is clearly a great young bloke who has been dealt a horrible hand.
But he is playing it with enormous dignity and I only hope that his health holds up long enough for a cure to be found for this appalling disease so that he might even recover from it.
It’s a long shot, but without hope there is nothing.
Jake Connor wins the Goldthorpe Medal
Congratulations to Jake Connor, who we can confirm has won the 2026 Albert Goldthorpe Medal.
With one round of fixtures remaining Jake sits on 29 points, five ahead of his nearest challenger Harry Smith.
Jake came second last year to Lachlan Lam but this year he has edged out all his challengers and played extremely well and consistently most weeks, although on Saturday night he didn’t give one of his best performances against Wigan.
I shall look forward to seeing him bounce back to his best.