Mikey Lewis is the anti-hero Super League needs (even if he boils my piss too)

I know exactly what you’re thinking: as if we need another article on the reigning Man of Steel and enfant terrible of Super League. Like we haven’t had enough of them already! Well, I’ll keep it brief, don’t worry.

I’ll be honest, Mikey Lewis confuses me. He’s the best half-back in Super League; there’s nobody else I’d rather watch. There is a joy in his insanely accurate kicking game. I don’t recall the last time I saw someone bounce off and out of tackles so easily, while also possessing the knack of backing up and supporting a break to score a try — often a break he’s created himself with a fantastic cut-out pass. Look at the try assists. Look at the tries. Look at the goal kicks to win the Challenge Cup. Is there anything he can’t do? 

Apparently, not acting like a bit of a grub when he steps onto the field is the only thing missing from his locker. He’s bloody good, and he knows it, much like many halves who stepped onto the field before him. Yet there is a fine line between exuding a bit of confidence (see Lee Briers), knowing you’re good and playing up to it with the fans as a pantomime villain (file under Sam Tomkins), and seemingly the new, top tier carved out by Lewis himself of ensuring you’re one the most marked men in the competition by all your opposition and most neutrals.

There’s been plenty of incidents this year involving the Rovers superstar — screaming in the oppositions’ faces, leaving a leg in the play the ball, laughing at knock-ons, rubbing heads in faux commiserations. His shithousing repertoire is nearly as impressive as his range of kicks and passes, which is quite the compliment.

There aren’t many players who can completely get under the skin of the opposition so much that the defence stops watching the man with the ball because they’ve lost their rag with a different individual, as Cade Cust did in the Hull derby this weekend, gifting Jack Broadbent one of the easiest tries he’ll score in his career. As the Rovers fans like to sing, “He’s in your head...” And the Cust scuffle showed Lewis has perfected the dark arts when it comes to rattling the opposition.

It’d be quite easy to say, “Oh if he just cut all this out he’d be fine,” but in truth I’m not sure it’s that simple. Maybe boiling the opposition’s piss is the thing that creates the magic that Mikey clearly possesses and fuels him to be the star he is. I sometimes wonder if you take away the more questionable elements of someone like Lewis, in the same way that a painter’s moody temperament or a musician’s melancholy inspires their finest work, you’d be taking away a large part of their personality and the bits that make them tick, and you’d only start to chip into what makes Lewis the relentless competitor and best British half-back I can recall coming through the ranks for many a year. Would cleaning Lewis up a bit be like taking a big rubber to that fine line between genius and madness?

I don’t know much about Lewis off the field. I’m sure he’s a good guy. Perhaps creating a cocky on-pitch alter-ego is the only way you ascend to the level he has. Having a sense of self-belief and backing yourself so much is maybe a lot easier if you’re the “he’s in your head” version that Hull KR fans chant about, a perfect psychological projection of the cocky little scrum-half archetype from yesteryear reinvented for the modern age.

That said, in a time when the sport is trying to clean up the game, out with the biff, in with shot clocks and captain’s challenges, I’m not sure the game as a whole relishes Mikey Lewis constantly screaming and laughing in people’s faces, or having the centre of big games post-match focusing on drama around his conduct.

Or maybe they do. The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about. It’s just much easier for a half-back to play the role of pantomime villain and resident gobshite in 2025, when the sport has — rightfully so (to a point) — eradicated punching and brawling with big bans and a different outlook on this type of thing. It’s hard not to wonder how Lewis would have fared in the advent of Super League, laughing in Barrie McDermott, Nick Fozzard or Dean Sampson’s face when vigilante justice and giving someone a good hiding would have been par for course.

So, in a full-blooded, high-stakes derby, the Jack Ashworth elbow in Lewis’ face incident this weekend seemed slightly inevitable. Was it avoidable? Well, if you don’t go around the entire game niggling, absolutely. Is it something you want to see happen on a pitch? Absolutely not. But as Stevo used to say on Sky Sports commentary, “It’s not tiddlywinks.” I imagine if Stevo had played against Lewis and spent seventy minutes having the piss taken out of his bald head and the way he said “seeoopurb” he’d have done the same as Ashworth. As the hosts often say on the Boom Rookies NRL podcast, it’s absolutely fine to be a niggling little shithouse, but it should be codified in the laws of the game that if that’s the role you want to play then you’re obliged to have a punch-up once a season — and the risk you take is that it’s not for you to decide when, where, or who against. Maybe we can call it The Lewis Rule.

Like I say, I love watching Lewis. My only concern is that, as the Rovers fans sing, “He’s in my head,” and I worry if one of the Aussies takes exception to his antics in the Ashes like Ashworth did this weekend, his head could end up in the Humber. ⬧