By STEVE MASCORD
LONDON coach Mike Eccles responded to the Broncos’ first Super League win in four and a half years by detailing the club’s heartbreak that they will be relegated this year no matter how many more victories they get.
Stand-off Oil Leyland punched the air after taking an intercept and racing 60 metres with 12 minutes left at Cherry Red Records Stadium, securing the 34-18 win that ended a Super League drought stretching back to September 2019.
“I’m not going to sit here and say it was just another game – it was huge,” said the coach.
But Eccles, a strength and conditioning expert thrust into the job having never had any ambition to coach at this level, went on to speak of the club’s sadness at being told they were the 24th-ranked professional rugby league club in the country and had no hope of staying in the elite division next year under IMG’s plans for the game.
“We’ve always been very hurt by it,” he said.
“No-one knows what we’ve been through, to have a plan to build and that gets taken away before you even go on your holidays … and say ‘you agreed to the terms’ – we didn’t.
“We didn’t know exactly how this was going to unfold.
“If the game wants London in the competition the game needs to decide the strategy around that.
“Because we don’t meet the criteria … put in place over three years which is the worst three years of the club.
“It puts us on par with clubs who’ve never been in the top flight, who haven’t got investment like our owner’s invested, who haven’t got facilities like this.”
London led 16-12 at halftime, briefly fell behind and then brought the house down with a blazing finish despite losing skipper Will Lovell with concussion from the kick-off of the second session.
Some Hull FC fans waved players away when they went to meet them at full-time and caretaker coach Simon Grix was damning, saying: “We showed why we’re down there … rugby league’s got a funny way of finding you out.
Grix said the club was going up but “not everyone’s going with us. A lot of blokes gave us reasons why they’re not going to be there.
“We’re not as good as we thought were.”
To make matters worse for FC, there was a racism complaint made against an unidentified player as a scrum was packing during the first half.
“I’ve got doubt over what was said there,” referee Chris Kendall said, placing the exchange on report.
A London official, who did not wish to be named, said: “The allegation is a racist comment by one of them against us.”
Image: John Clifton
