Bedford Tigers may have missed out to Goole Vikings for a spot in League One, but they continue to fly the flag for rugby league in an area ripe for expansion in future.
BEDFORD TIGERS director of rugby Rob Ashton offered a pragmatic and frankly surprising response when asked if he was disappointed his Southern Conference League (SCL) club missed out on admission to League One in 2025. The RFL opted for heartlands club Goole Vikings instead.
“I don’t begrudge the decision at all. I actually think it was the right decision,” Ashton said
“A lot of hard work went into it (the Bedford Tigers bid). It was disappointing but I was always of the opinion that 2025 was going to be a real challenge.
“You look at what the NRL do when they’re expanding and they’re like okay, the Dolphins you guys have got the gig but you’re coming in two years time. So you’ve got two years to say, look, we’ve got a franchise. You can go out and find your extra investment, your sponsorships, your players, your support network. The same with what they’re doing now with Papua New Guinea. They are not coming in for another two years and then there’ll be another team that’s probably another year further down the line.
“I’m not saying that it was a poor decision from the RFL in terms of we need you in 2025. They needed a team for 2025 and that was always the remit. It was always going to be a stretch for us. I put in place what I could put in place. Our application was what I could do. I talked to as many people as I could to try and back us up and get us across the line.
“Goole Vikings, they are well placed. They kind of came out of nowhere but they’ve got a community club there and then this professional club is actually backed up by people with a lot of experience. They’ve got former executives from Super League working there. They’ve got former Super League players as coaches, they’ve got former Super League players signed on. They’ll be good, they’ll do well and they’re placed in an area that’s ripe for rugby league. They can just pick up rugby league players because they live around there.
“If it had been a two year process or a three year process, I’d probably be a bit more pissed off because we’ve got a population of, I think it’s nine times as many. They’ve got 20,000 in Goole and Bedford’s got a population of 185,000 people and growing. So as an expansion area I think we would have been ideal. But we’ll go again. We believe that we are a good spot for expansion. We’ve got a lot of really good things in place. We’ll keep trying.”
Like many growing up in his neck of the woods Ashton initially played the other rugby code before discovering our game. Rugby league had a profound effect on the 42 year old firefighter with the Bedfordshire Fire and Rescue Service who is still known to lace up the boots for the Tigers when needed.
“Where I am is a rugby union heartland. I’m about a million miles from anywhere that’s got anything to do with rugby league. There just happened to be an expat northerner and an Australian guy who were running a rugby league side for something to do for rugby union players in the summer back in 2004 and rebranded it as Bedford Tigers. We just celebrated 20 years. I picked it up by accident. I went along (after being asked to fill in for a match) and they were teaching me the rules on the way down. And we got down there and obviously I messed up because there was way too much rugby union instilled in me at the time but I loved it. It was everything I was looking for.”
Ashton’s love for the ‘greatest game of all’ blossomed to the point where at 29 years old he moved into an administration role to ensure that both Bedford Tigers and the local competition continued to play rugby league.
“It was literally driven by me wanting to play the sport and all I could see was if I don’t do it, nobody’s doing it, so (in that case) I am just going to not play the sport.”
That drive and dedication has led to Bedford Tigers fielding competitive men’s, women’s and wheelchair teams with a legends (over 35s) side set to be introduced this year as well as plans for youth development.
Ensuring he remains busy, Ashton took over as head coach of the Cambridge University men’s rugby league team in 2017 taking them to a victory in the varsity match against Oxford in 2021 after a long drought and then repeating the win in 2023. There’s more items on Ashton’s rugby league agenda having recently committed to organising a Scotland women’s rugby league team, something that hasn’t happened previously.
“I think the women’s game is a really good growth area for the sport. It’s a really achievable growth area for the sport. And Scotland doesn’t have a women’s side.”
Speaking with the Bedford firefighter it is clear he has a passion and desire to make a full time career out of rugby league.
“I would like to work in professional sport. I just live two hours from anywhere that’s professional rugby league. It’s sixty miles to get to London Broncos. So I just said well if I can’t go to it, I’m going to bring it to me. I’m just going to build it here. The aspiration is still to do it. We’ve obviously got to wait for an opportunity to come up. There is talk of opening up promotion and relegation from Conference level into League One. I don’t know how that’s going to work, but that’ll be a couple of years down the line if it does happen. Going through this process opened my eyes to how far off professional or even semi-professional we actually are.
“So next year and the year after is going to be putting these things in place. Let’s start creating a match day experience. Let’s start building a crowd. Let’s start looking at bringing players in who have been on pathways.
“I’ve always thought you’re only hampered and restricted by your imagination.”
First published in Rugby League World magazine, Issue 506 (March 2025)
