Hull KR and Warrington can save rugby league from itself
At least for one day.
Are you as excited as I am for the Challenge Cup final? Well don’t be! You’re wrong!
That sound you can hear is me banging my head against a wall. We can add this to a long list of members of the rugby league media questioning why there isn’t more hype or attention around the sport, only to use their chance to build hype or attention around the sport by shitting on one of its ‘marquee events’.
I can’t really be arsed debating whether Magic Weekend is really bigger than the Challenge Cup final, but I find it ironic that it was only last year Aaron Bower was using some rare column inches in a national newspaper to tell us the 2024 iteration of Magic Weekend was guaranteed to be ‘uninspiring’ on the eve of the event itself. Bower’s piece in The Guardian failed to mention a single player who would be competing over the six games that weekend, which made it all the weirder when he was tweeting in January in reference to Sky paying more to broadcast darts than they do rugby league that...
Luke Littler has undoubtedly driven that increase — which for the PDC is huge. A lesson for rugby league — focus on creating stars and selling their stories. Captivate audiences. Don't just scream 'the product is great' and rely on it until the end of time. Evolve.
It’s something I hear and read rugby league journalists say a lot, and it always confuses me. Who exactly do they expect to tell those stories? Isn’t that, like, their job? Instead, a month later, Bower used his space in The Guardian on the Saturday before the 2025 Super League season began to write an article titled, ‘Bright lights of Las Vegas cannot dim the dark clouds over Super League.’ How many players did he mention in that piece who might be able to captivate an audience with their stories? You guessed it — yet again, zero. So much for creating stars, I guess.
I’m not suggesting that journalists shouldn’t cover the legitimate issues facing rugby league — and, boy, there are a lot of them. But bemoaning an event before it has even taken place feels mistimed, as we found out when Leigh beat Wigan 1-0 on the opening night of the season and made headlines on the other side of the world.
Maybe the Challenge Cup final will be a flop. Maybe nobody will turn up, nobody will watch on TV, and the match itself will underwhelm. Or maybe whichever team wins will generate some stories we should be shouting about.
The most obvious place to start is the halves, and the face of Hull KR and quite possibly Super League itself, Mikey Lewis. A mercurial gobshite who plays with a chip on his shoulder and magic in his boots, Lewis is the perfect number seven — except he has been bestowed with the honour of wearing the number six shirt of Rovers’ biggest icon Roger Millward.
Growing up in south Leeds, I knew Millward as the elderly caretaker I would sporadically spot shuffling around my high school. The only time I heard him speak was when he stopped to ask if we were the rugby league team as we waited for a coach to take us to a cup game in Hull of all places. To get there, we would have been driven down a road that is now known as Roger Millward Way. None of us knew he was part of the last Great Britain team to win an Ashes series in Australia, an MBE, or immortalised in the rugby league Hall of Fame. In one of his final games for Hull KR, in 1980, Millward captained the side to Challenge Cup glory against their fierce rivals Hull FC despite breaking his jaw just fifteen minutes into the game.
After Millward passed away in 2016, KR retired the number six shirt he wore with such distinction, which speaks volumes of the pressure and expectation on Lewis, who was awarded the squad number after being given the blessing of Millward’s family. They could hardly be more contrasting characters on the pitch, yet if Hull KR are to win their first major trophy since the second World War without Millward as a player or coach, then Magic Mikey will almost certainly have his moment.
Which could present England coach Shaun Wane with a problem, because opposite Lewis will be the man Wane has entrusted as his captain ahead of the first Ashes series for over two decades in George Williams. After undergoing ankle surgery in April, Williams has returned almost a month ahead of schedule for the final. If Warrington are to upset the odds, they’re going to need what could be a career-defining performance from their skipper.
While all eyes are on Lewis and Williams, Tyrone May is just as classy for KR and Wire scrum-half Marc Sneyd is aiming to become only the second player after Sean Long to win the Lance Todd Trophy as man of the match for a third time. The battle between veteran warhorses Jared Waerea-Hargreaves and Paul Vaughan up front promises to be explosive. With Arthur Morgue cup-tied, Jack Broadbent will switch to full-back and aim to cement his growing reputation as not just a jack of all trades but a master of them too. Warrington’s Arron Lindop is part of a burgeoning crop of exciting young English three-quarters. In the coaching boxes, Willie Peters can complete Hull KR’s transformation from finishing bottom of Super League five years ago to trophy winners for the first time in four decades, or Sam Burgess can prove he has the acumen to match the hype of his media profile.
It’s been a long time since I’ve looked forward to a Challenge Cup final so much, and I’ll be gutted if it does indeed turn out to be a busted flush. But until then, I’ll happily join both sets of fans and spend one more night dreaming for a bit of magic. Either way, there’ll be plenty of time to moan about it afterwards. ⬧
