Following a 4 months IMG consultation, clubs strongly supported the principle of a grading system in October 2022. The final criteria were approved by a strong majority of clubs (including London Broncos) in April 2023.
Grading crtieria are openly published and the Broncos provisional score of 8.07 (rank 24) was certainly in line with what I personally expected.
Let's see how Hughes comments stack up.
Our promotion last year was a magnificent achievement and it should have put us back in a position to push the club forward and to grow the sport in the country’s capital. However, instead of planning for the future where we can once again establish ourselves in Super League, we find ourselves being graded on the last 3 years - which have arguably been the toughest in the club's history. London Broncos have been in Super League for 21 out of the 28 years of its existence.Not surprisingly, the performance pillar is the joint largest single element of the grading system representing 25% of the score available. Judging performance over 3 years seems perfectly reasonable if straightforward promotion and relegation is no longer the system. Arguably Hughes did not know when he assembled such a dismal playing and coaching squad for 2022 that this would count towards the grading for the 2025 season but the chickens have come home to roost. While that squad did get bolstered in order to avoid relegation, the 11th place Championship finish in 2022 is clearly now doing us no favours. Our score will improve in this area by virtue of being in SL for 2024 but not by enough to make a difference.
London Broncos were relegated from Super League in 2019 the same year in which the COVID pandemic struck the globe. Relegation and the pandemic forced the club to become part-time, a very difficult but necessary financial decision. During this period clubs have since fallen into financial troubles, with some going into administration and others disappearing altogether. At no point have we suffered such issues yet some of those clubs receive a higher score for finances than ourselves.The finance pillar represents 22.5% of the points available. The majority of that comes from revenue diversification. Basically meaning turnover that is generated by the club rather than derived from central funding. This makes absolute sense if you want to encourage sustainable clubs. However, it is an area Hughes has consistently failed to focus on since he took over sole control and indeed he has overseen steady erosion of the fanbase and the subsequent ability to generate income. We have seen a rather obsessive focus on selling premium tickets but not much else. Reliance on the wealth of an individual to support the club is not a good model (and therefore does not score well).
We have worked tirelessly within our community to discover talent and create a pathway to professional rugby league. In a part of the world which is dominated by other sports, in particular rugby union, we have been very successful. We have helped to produce countless players who now ply their trade in Super League and even current England players (Mike McMeekan & Kai Pearce Paul) have come through our academy. In last season’s Championship winning squad there was just one person who was born in the north of the country - that was the head coach Mike Eccles.
We made the difficult decision not to run our academy in 2024 - a decision that was made with the new IMG grading criteria in mind. We will instead run a new ‘Lions Development’ programme which will still see us create a pathway for youngsters in London and the surrounding areas. Within the IMG grading criteria there is no direct reward for having an academy and producing players. We all share the same ambition to grow the sport, so why would this not be included in the criteria yet something like the amount of social media followers a team has is?The academy has proved to be a good pipeline but we do not retain the best players. In the past (LMS, Clubb etc) it seemed we tended to get a few seasons out of them before they moved on. Despite that, we have a large proportion of the squad fed by the academy and for that reason the academy should have been retained despite it not forming part of the grading criteria. Having a talent & perfomance pathway is part of the (non scoring) minimum standard to be graded A or B so the club really had no choice but to do that. Seems to me Hughes' decision here is a hissy fit.
We embrace the challenges that we face by being the only professional club south of the midlands and the only Super League club south of Castleford (in the UK). We acknowledge that we still have a long way to go to establish the club and sport within London. However, there can be no denying that due to its size and population London’s potential remains as big as it has ever been. Yet despite being in London and being the only professional club in the south of the country we were awarded the lowest possible score for our catchment area. This needs to be re-looked at.The community pillar represents 12.5% of the criteria scoring. Within this pillar, 60% of the score is given to a calulation of area population of Local Authority District (2021 census) divided by number of Tier 1 and 2 clubs in that area. I don't see how we were awarded the lowest possible score which would be 0.5 grading points for <130K. Merton's population is 215,324. This should gain 1 grading point as the relevant band is 130K - 260K. Only a further 0.5 point is available with 260K+ being awarded 1.5 grading points. If Hughes is correct that we were awarded the lowest score then this should simply be appealed. (FYI Ealing has a population of 344,837)
Promotion and relegation should be a staple of all sports. We are proud of this tradition whereas in other countries promotion and relegation is not always the case. It’s what brings the excitement to sport! Condemning a club to relegation before a ball has even been kicked takes away the jeopardy and drama that makes the millions tune in week on week, year after year. If London Broncos finish the 2024 season in 11th place or higher there has to be a scenario in place in which we stay in the division. He maybe has a point but the time to take this stand was probably when the criteria were being voted on. Several Championship and League 1 clubs did vote against and a couple abstained. Hughes voted for a system based on grading instead of promotion and relegation. Maybe when he voted he should have been thinking about the scenario of us getting promoted but perhaps given the squad we had in April 2023 that was not in his mind.
We all share the same goal of improving rugby league and we are aware that in scenarios like this it is impossible to universally please everyone. London Broncos want to work with IMG to improve as a club and we continue to have the long term aim of achieving a Grade A status - but we also urge IMG to consider the points being put to them by the many clubs who have raised similar concerns. This is not to act as a moan but simply to once again open up the conversation about the criteria being put forward by IMG as how to grow but protect the sport in which we all love.Fair enough, I'm sure the grading system is not perfect but it delivered the score we deserved (given the criteria as published).
We are actually paying the price of Hughes decisions over a period of years. I note Hughes only indirectly mentions areas relating to the fandom pillar which is the joint highest scoring at 25% of grading points and an area where we will have scored particularly badly.
We acknowledge that we still have a long way to go to establish the club and sport within London.Indeed, even despite moving to a bigger stadium (which will have boosted our score given the 15% of grading points awarded to this), Hughes has failed to invest in promoting the club and arresting the declining fanbase. We will get better scoring as a result of visiting fans next season but this is not the answer to our problems. The required focus for Hughes to improve the club is straightforward:
[*]Grow the home support
[*]Become financially sustainable
[*]Be a consistently competitive Championship club
[*]Reinstate the academy
Doing these things will improve our ratings and pave the way for a SL return on a sound basis.
If Hughes cannot commit to this then his priority should be to find an investor who will.
