Gary Hetherington is wandering down the Mississippi Delta

Where would you find rugby league’s answer to the crossroads of Highways 49 and 61 in Clarksdale, Mississippi, better known as the place where blues musician Robert Johnson may or — more likely — may not have sold his soul to the devil? Red Hall House, the old RFL headquarters just outside Leeds? The cash-for-cans bar at the Garden Gate pub in Hunslet? The roundabout on the A66 that gives you the choice of travelling on to Workington or Whitehaven?

Or maybe it’s the meeting room at Headingley stadium last Monday, where the owners of all twelve Super League clubs met and voted to increase the competition to fourteen teams from next season, with Gary Hetherington somewhere in the middle of it all, flanked by his unlikely bedfellows Nigel Wood and Derek Beaumont.

I’ve been trying to write about rugby league’s latest reach for the big red panic button for the last week, but for all I’ve tried I’ve been unable to get past two things. First, this sound: eeeeuuurrrrrrrrrggggggggghhhhhh! And second, this meme, which continues to explain the future of the sport better and more succinctly than anything I can muster:

Yet for all the unanswered questions that remain from last Monday’s announcement, one fascinates me far more than any other. What the hell is Gary Hetherington playing at?

Hetherington is the man who, in 2018, described Super League clubs splitting from the RFL to form their own governing body as “an absurd grab for power by a small group of men who think they own the game”. Fast forward to 2025 and he has been one of the main figures in leading a coup of the RFL’s leadership while convincing the rest of the league to expand the competition at a time when he just so happens to be leaving Leeds Rhinos for a role as a director at Championship club London Broncos. It doesn’t take the tinfoil hat of Danny Richardson to join the dots and suggest there’s a pretty good chance that London — currently 10th in the second tier and operating on a reduced budget while Hetherington searches for willing investors — will be a Super League club in 2026. Likewise, returning RFL chief Nigel Wood remains a shareholder at fellow Championship outfit Bradford, who are also tipped to be back in Super League next season. From the outside, it looks an awful lot like an absurd grab for power by a small group of men who think they own the game. Or as I wrote in March on Hetherington:

In the right light, it looks like the final play from an ageing mafia boss who has been patiently waiting in the background to remind a new generation of challengers of his authority.

But questions still persist. Namely, what power or authority does a seat at the top table of rugby league in the northern hemisphere actually provide these days? For all Warrington CEO Karl Fitzpatrick described loop fixtures — which will be eradicated from Super League next season due to the increase in teams — as “the main issue in the game”, he also conceded:

“If we don’t present and market the sport in the right way to new audiences and broadcasters, then it doesn’t matter how big your league is. This is not the silver bullet.”

Basically, the main issue in the game is actually that clubs are skint and the sport has been generating an ever-dwindling revenue to share between those clubs. So how will a fourteen-team league help that? All we have heard from those involved is that it will get rid of loop fixtures. The only other details we’ve heard are: 

• The decision has pissed off Sky Sports, who it will cost £500,000 to broadcast an extra fixture each week in the final season of a broadcast deal that has already almost halved in value from £40m to £21.5m and is up for renewal with limited interest from alternative broadcasters. Just to add to the madness, The Guardian reported that in the meeting between club chiefs, ‘one of their big concerns was how the broadcaster would react to the decision, as well as how the extra games will be financed.’ They went ahead with the decision regardless.
• Sport England, another of the game’s major sources of funds, wants to meet with the RFL to discuss concerns about whether the appointment of Nigel Wood followed an ‘open and transparent’ process.
• The current Super League clubs are adamant they will not receive less central funding next season, meaning any new clubs could have to operate with reduced funding in comparison to their competitors, requiring their owners to make up the shortfall.

Is this really the landscape Hetherington, as a self-described proponent of expansion, envisaged for London? Is this really what London needs right now, when they’re still looking for investment, are battling to avoid dropping into the third tier, and don’t even know what they’re going to be called next season? Was it really worth all this hassle? It’s difficult to work out who, if anyone, benefits. And the people responsible are too busy mumbling about loop fixtures to even bother trying to promise us a rosier future.

Rather than a play from an ageing mafia boss, Hetherington’s actions now appear tinged with melancholy. His authority at Leeds has been gradually diluted since he appointed Kevin Sinfield as director of rugby in 2018 and accepted he wasn’t up to the job of hiring the coach and signing the players anymore. The brief interlude when Sinfield left and Hetherington was once again a focal point of the organisation resulted in the disaster of Rohan Smith as coach and signings like Luis Roberts and Derrell Olpherts, who were never good enough to wear the shirt. Now Ian Blease is picking up the pieces as sporting director and Jamie Jones-Buchanan is replacing Hetherington as CEO tasked with revitalising Leeds into one of the more dynamic clubs in the league again. If anything, Hetherington’s role in trying to crowbar London back into Super League feels more like a septuagenarian desperately trying to make himself feel relevant one last time.

Of course, London are yet to be confirmed as a Super League club for next season, and that leaves me with one final question. Has Hetherington ever taken a moment to consider whether he chose the right people to make a faustian pact with? I wouldn’t trust Nigel Wood and Derek Beaumont to deliver a newspaper, let alone salvage a sport that has spent over a century peering over the precipice. If I was involved with London and the future of my club rested in the hands of the people running the game right now, I wouldn’t take it for granted.

Given Hetherington was a major influence on an iconic Leeds team that gave me some of the best nights of my life, I sincerely hope he’s as shrewd now as he was then and this is more than a grab for a small piece of a shrinking pie. If not, he isn’t going to get much sympathy when he finds out like Robert Johnson that there’s a price to selling your own soul. ⬧