Gary Hetherington urges Super League to learn from missed chances over 30 years

Former Leeds chief executive Gary Hetherington says Super League must learn from the missed opportunities that have marred its first 30 years as it prepares to mark the milestone when his old club face Warrington at Headingley on Sunday.

Hetherington, who was head coach of Sheffield Eagles when they played and lost in the first Super League match against Paris St Germain in the French capital in March 1996, is convinced its creation saved rugby league from ruin and has left it in a much healthier financial state.

But he believes the continued failure by administrators and owners to grasp the possibilities of expansion and growing the game outside its traditional areas have consistently blighted its ability to realise a potential that he continues to insist is huge.

Hetherington, who left Leeds last year to join an ambitious new ownership group at Championship club London Broncos, told the Press Association: “I think 30 years on, rugby league has never grasped the notion of expansion.

“If you are serious about expanding the game, you’ve got to have a strategic plan that supports new clubs, new areas, and puts a development plan into new places. That’s what the game has never done.

“That’s what I hoped Super League would bring to rugby league. It wasn’t only London but the south west of England, maybe even Scotland, Ireland and Wales, that’s what I would have hoped 30 years ago, and it’s not become reality.

“Super League injected a lot of money into our game and enabled our top clubs to go full-time, but as a game we did not spend the money wisely. We, as the game’s administrators as such, are culpable for having not really made the best of it.”

The PSG experiment survived just two seasons before dissolving in scandal, while similar issues afflicted the overambitious and even more short-lived elevation of Canadian club Toronto Wolfpack into the top flight in 2020.

Those flickering moments of expansionist optimism – add numerous London iterations including the run to the Challenge Cup final in 1999 – were shared by Hetherington when he took the team he founded to face Paris in Charlety on March 29 1996.

“I got a call from Maurice Lindsay, who was then the RFL chief executive, saying how would you fancy Sheffield Eagles playing in Paris in the first game?” recalled Hetherington. “One of the reasons for the choice was that so many people in Europe had heard of the city of Sheffield.

“The media were predicting a pretty dismal crowd, but they nearly had to delay the kick-off. There were over 17,000 and it came as a surprise to everybody. There was a real sense of occasion and it was a famous win for the Paris team, and it kicked off Super League in pretty good fashion.”

While PSG’s top-flight tenure was short-lived, the club’s legacy indirectly lived on, with Catalans Dragons invited into Super League in 2006. Toulouse ultimately followed as a second French club, and Hetherington’s current project is to ensure a revitalised London follow in 2027.

Hetherington added: “Our game needs to expand, and London and the south east is a critical region. It’s got the population, the major companies, the Royal Family – it’s where we need to be to spread and develop our game.”