WATCHING the game between Hull KR and Warrington last Thursday night, I wasn’t too surprised to see the Robins struggling to play at the level we’ve seen from them earlier in the season.
It’s been clear for several weeks that the team had run out of gas and was struggling to dominate its opponents in the way we had got used to seeing.
They limped to the finishing line, but the important thing was that they got there in the end against a strong challenge from a Warrington team that has also been limping along ever since losing out to the Robins at Wembley in June. That defeat, which came very late in the game, seems to have made a lasting impression on the minds of the Warrington players.
The important thing for Hull KR is that they now have a fortnight to prepare for their semi-final, by which time I will be amazed if they haven’t rediscovered the spark that was there for much of the season.
The person for whom I was most pleased on the night was Hull KR owner Neil Hudgell, who has invested time, money and much emotion into his time with the club since buying it in 2004, when the club finished third in National League 1 (then the second tier) with an average attendance of 2,186 (it’s interesting to note that Leigh came top of that competition in 2004 with an average attendance of 2,166).
It’s been an emotional rollercoaster for Neil since those days, with plenty of ups and downs, and he came very close to selling the club in 2020. But the key fact is that Hull KR have improved their support sixfold in the last 21 years, which is an extraordinary achievement by anyone’s standards.
Rarely has anyone more richly deserved to be successful, although to watch Neil on the sidelines last Thursday night, as the game ebbed and flowed and Warrington took a 20-16 lead with Adam Holroyd’s try on 55 minutes, was to see the agony of being both an owner and an emotionally invested fan.
It was a truly draining experience for Neil, as he admitted afterwards, and probably for the vast majority of the Robins’ fans.
But when Arthur Mourgue ran almost the length of the field to touch down for the Robins’ penultimate try, you could sense the pendulum swinging for the last time, much to the home fans’ delight.
Hull KR now have a chance to regroup for the big one at Old Trafford, although they certainly can’t count their chickens and they will face a very strong challenge from whoever their opponents turn out to be in a couple of weeks’ time.