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The favourites for the Championship title meet in the south of France on Saturday evening. It would be a surprise if the match between Toulouse Olympique and Bradford Bulls is not repeated at the end of the campaign in the Championship Grand Final. But what the 13 teams in the second tier are playing for this season remains unclear – and will still be unknown when autumn leaves begin to fall.
Toulouse and Bradford are the only two clubs still spending anywhere near the seven-figures usually required to reach the Grand Final. The removal of automatic promotion and relegation last year did not prevent the Championship winners, Wakefield, from replacing Super League’s bottom team, London Broncos, in the top flight this season. But that scenario is unlikely to be repeated this October, when the 12 clubs in Super League will again be decided solely by the IMG grading system. Winning the Championship may be about glory rather than promotion.
Toulouse, who started this year 13th in the IMG grading system, and Bradford, who were three places further back in 16th, could have the infrastructure and players required to leapfrog a Super League club. They are the only second-tier clubs that are revving their engines in Super League’s pit lane, ready to pounce if vulnerable Salford or Huddersfield hit the buffers.
Toulouse decided to stay full time this season as it is the only way their players can cope with the logistics of flying to England every fortnight. Their coach, Sylvain Houles, thought long and hard before deciding to remain in charge for a 14th season. His commitment is a huge boost for the club but the number of top-flight names in the squad has shrunk in line with their budget.
Bradford, on the other hand, are splashing out on players because they need to win the competition. The IMG points a title would bring are vital given the poor facilities and patchy crowds at the vast Odsal Stadium. They are top of the Championship table after two rounds of fixtures but are yet to click for the full 80 minutes.
Former NRL stars Waqa Blake and Jorge Taufa are hugely experienced – and, like Matty Gee and James Donaldson (who is still playing for the club 16 years after his debut), still in their prime years – but they are still adjusting to the Championship’s bruising nature. Brian Noble’s side dumped Castleford out of the Challenge Cup, but then took a while to overcome London in their opening league match at Odsal and conceded 20 points at newly promoted Hunslet, and only won a bruising 1895 Cup tie at Batley by a try.
The Championship remains a country for old men. It’s a division that still features blokes who played when Gordon Brown was Prime Minister and Liz McDonald was running the Rovers. Newly promoted Hunslet managed to lure Kevin Larroyer and former Brisbane Bronco Greg Eden to south Leeds; and with 350 senior games to his name, 35-year-old hooker Paul McShane is steering York around. Last year Doncaster’s survival plan was based on signing a minibus full of veterans with vast experience. It worked. Now the likes of Bureta Faraimo and Pauli Pauli have to produce again.
Oldham are this winter’s curiosity. Rugby royalty Mike Ford and Sean Long have attracted a string of star names to the club and are building off the field at the revitalised Boundary Park. Josh Drinkwater (10 years in Super League), Iain Thornley (nine seasons), Gil Dudson (15 seasons) and Adam Milner (more than 300 Super League appearances) have all joined. That knowhow alone could get them into the playoffs.
We are only a couple of games into the season but many clubs may already be worrying about relegation. Most clubs slashed their wage bills when IMG arrived on the scene, realising they needed to spend on infrastructure and facilities rather than an expensive halfback. The majority have got their act together and some have finally arrived in the 21st century.
The reduced investment in players appears to have set up a season of tight contests, with little to choose between teams. Dual-code star Kyle Eastmond, who is getting a tough first taste of head coach life with Halifax, might have to settle for avoiding the slipmat of the Super 8s – where the Championship’s worst four play off against League One’s best for the right to play in a 12-team Championship in 2026.
The early rounds have been notably close. Promoted Oldham drew with Batley; Widnes won by a try at Toulouse in round one and by a goal against Sheffield a week later; Toulouse snatched a 7-6 win at York; and London Broncos came from behind to win a fierce battle with Featherstone by just two points.
“Nearly every game at this time of the season is a war of attrition with defences on top,” said London coach Mike Eccles, whose newly built team has started well. “Things tend to slacken off as the season wears on and more points get scored. It’s a massive work in progress to get to where we need to be, but the togetherness they’ve shown already is exactly how I want my teams to be known.”
At the start of the season, Featherstone had a highly regarded coach and four half-backs to choose from. After two games they had no half-backs and no coach. The defeat by London cost James Ford his job; Ged Corcoran has been appointed his replacement, reuniting with his Ireland assistant Paul Cooke. With halfback Thomas Lacans joining Toulouse, they will have to take the creative weight off Danny Addy and enable centre Carlos Tuimavave to sprinkle his magic.
London Broncos have no big names: not a single Bronco has played 100 Super League games, but Eccles is building on foundations laid by experienced Championship players in their prime. With a mystery new investor giving the thumbs up to sign any available talent, they should get stronger as Eccles hands career lifelines to more stragglers, starting with a surprise deal for the former Leeds winger Liam Tindall.
“He’s a phenomenal player who’s had a difficult year or so,” says Eccles of 23-year-old Tindall. “He had some other offers but we said we’d get him back to where he wants to be – in Super League. We’re not shouting about it right now, but we want to be there, too. I don’t want players who want to be part-time. I want players for whom it’s a requirement to be part-time while they get their careers back on track or develop quickly. Very rarely does a player come to London and not improve.”
With promotion out of the equation for all but Toulouse and Bradford, simple goals like that are going to be more common in the Championship this season.
One more thing
Las Vegas set the bar at a height some Super League clubs are struggling to clear. So far we’ve had the opening-night fiasco at Wigan when the clock failed to reset for extra time; a dapper chap in a flat cap and smart mac hurrying on to the pitch at Hull to tell the match officials the stadium big screens – which earn IMG points, remember – had packed in so only he would know how much time was left; a Category A club extending their makeshift TV gantry with scaffolding to the requisite size then promptly removing it once the auditors had gone; and a coach who has commandeered the seats designated for radio broadcasters and no one at the club is brave enough to tell him he can’t sit there. Teething problems or amateurism? You decide.
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