London Broncos take on Warrington Wolves at the Halliwell Jones Stadium on Friday night knowing victory is likely to mean they finish 11th in Super League this season, just above last-placed Hull FC.
In any other year this would have saved the Broncos from relegation and kept them in the top flight for another season, but not in 2024.
The Broncos’ fate has been known since last October when IMG, the global marketing giant appointed in 2022 to revitalise UK rugby league, released its provisional gradings for the sport’s 35 professional and semi-professional clubs.
As part of a new, controversial licensing system that replaces traditional promotion and relegation, the Broncos were ranked 24th with a grade B and well out of Super League’s top tier of 12.
With the trapdoor being shut for London before a Steeden was even kicked in the new season, there were fears about how competitive the newly-promoted team would be.
Mike Eccles’ motley side, filled with homegrown talent and some part-time players, lost their first 11 games in a row, conceding an average of 43.6 points a match in their first six fixtures.
But over the past two months the Broncos have secured victories against Catalans and Hull FC, and almost grabbed wins over Leeds and Warrington.
Easy beats for the first two-thirds of the campaign, Eccles’ men have improved each week and proved more than credible opposition while the Black & Whites, traditionally one of rugby league’s bigger clubs, have stagnated further.
“We’ve been so close against Warrington, Leigh, Leeds, against Catalans,” Eccles says. “The performances have been absolutely magnificent.”
Despite being handed mission impossible, London Broncos have performed admirably and criticism of IMG’s grading process, and the clamour about the unfairness of the position the capital outfit finds itself in while Hull FC is deemed safe, has grown.
Leigh Leopards owner Derek Beaumont has even threatened a legal fight to ensure the Black & Whites, who have been given a grade A by IMG, are relegated if they finish bottom.
The greater irony is that IMG publicly identified London as a key area of growth for rugby league after they were appointed by the RFL in 2022, even describing the capital as a “sleeping giant” of the sport.
“The thing that surprised us is when we looked at all the data, you took the names off the cities and looked at participation, interest and a few other metrics, London was at the top and I don’t think anyone would have guessed that,” IMG’s vice-president for sports management Matt Dwyer said.
“We’re all sitting there thinking there’s a sleeping giant here: we’re not saying London for the sake of it because it’s London. We’re saying it because there’s a future here and the metrics we’ve seen suggest it.”
However, since then IMG and the RFL have done little to strengthen or support the London market.
A year later London Skolars pulled out of League 1, leaving the Broncos as the only club in the professional ranks, while crowds at Wembley for the Challenge Cup final have declined.
Now the future of the Broncos, with the IMG grade they have been handed and a return to the Championship imminent, is in grave doubt.
The Broncos have only averaged 3,435 fans at Plough Lane this year, the lowest home attendance in the competition, and their players are being picked off by their Super League rivals for 2025, meaning a major rebuild in the off-season will be needed.
Owner David Hughes, who has pumped tens of millions into the club since he got involved in 1996, admits the long-term survival of the Broncos is under a cloud.
“We’re up in the air at the moment… the IMG ruling is bizarre,” he told Sky Sports.
“It was all based on our last three years in the Championship. but we’ve been in Super League for 20 out of the 27 years.
“I don’t know how that was assessed, who allowed someone to come up with the last three years to give the ratings.”
Rugby league has been played in the capital at various levels for more than 100 years and a top-flight team has existed since the creation of Fulham in 1980.
The nomadic club has moved around the city for the past four decades, been rebadged as London Crusaders and Harlequins, before returning to the Broncos brand in 2012.
It has flirted with financial trouble and implosion before, but it remains to be seen whether the appetite and resources are still there to majorly revamp the club and improve its off-field capabilities enough to get it back into Super League under IMG’s watch.
Rugby league has never answered the existential question of what it wants out of the London market and what it is prepared to do, and sacrifice, to make the capital a success.
Meanwhile, the inspirational Eccles and his charges prepare to do battle with grand-final chasing Warrington in their “last dance”.
Not finishing last will not save the Broncos, but it may provide a glimmer of hope as the dark days begin.
“It’s a drive, absolutely it’s a drive,” Eccles insists.
“We’re not banging the drum saying we want to get off bottom to make a point.
“But obviously it would be fantastic if we did that, it would be a small victory for us as a club.”