FANS FORUM - WHAT WAS SAID?

FANS FORUM - WHAT WAS SAID?

Question: Are we going to change our name from London Broncos?

GH: I changed the name at Leeds and I can tell you that at the time it was unpopular. The fans of Leeds didn't want to change names. They said, we don't want all these gimmicky names. We did change, and this is the best thing we ever did. They created a new logo, a new brand, a new identity in many respects, a new mascot, and it's the best thing we ever did. If you ask 99% of the Leeds Rhinos fans now they will say that was a pretty good decision.

For us, it is being researched and ultimately no decision has been made and everyone needs to have an opinion and give it to me. It may well be (changed), and I was with a fairly prominent person the other day who came up with a very well-reasoned recommendation as to what the name should be. I thought, well, I never really thought about that, but it was a well-presented argument. We need as many of those as possible. We need to think about it and ultimately make a decision in the best interests of the club.

Question: Are you going to share it? (suggestion for new name)

GH: Well, since you've asked me the question, I will, yes. I won't give you the name of the person I'm talking to, but he's a very prominent person in the media, he's a Rugby League fan, and he's not an Englishman. But he was saying, in his opinion, the name should be simply London Rugby League. I said to him thank you very much for your suggestion and that it needs to be in the melting pot like all the other suggestions.

Question: On behalf of all the long-standing London fans in this room tonight, and I know most of them personally, we've all been together for many years. Can we just thank you for the interest and the commitment you've taken to The Club? Thank you. Honestly, it's created a superb momentum because of someone of your stature being involved in London. So, thank you very much.

GH: Well, thank you for that, and I feel very humbled by that and what I don't want to do is make any false promises. I think this is a fascinating journey, but it's a journey that I don't know how long it's going to take.



What I do know is it's all based on people's commitments coming together and as I've said several times, I don't have a magic wand.

I think my role is to actually galvanise interest and commitment and try and give it an opportunity, manifesting itself for the collective good of the club. That's primarily my role in all of this. And I can see by the attendance tonight that there's a great passion and a great interest and a great commitment as well. So that's a pretty good starting point. 

So I'm pretty confident that we've got quite a few ingredients in place. It's going to be a tough journey because it's a tough league. The Super League is an incredibly tough competition. The Championship is a terrific competition and it's so competitive. So to make progress we need to be pretty well organised and ready to go. We're ready to go and ready to make progress and my role in all this is to try and actually organise that and make it happen.

Question to ME - What are the challenges of attracting rugby players of both codes to the professional game? Because developing youngsters takes a lot of time and effort and they may not pan out.

So in terms of the business context, what is London trying to do now, how would you develop players?

ME: I think there's so much that can be done and I think the attitude of the NRL is much more refreshing nowadays. I think as a game we've got really lazy at developing our own players. We're talking about possibly opening up the quota spots to 10 per club, maybe even more. I think what's fascinating is the narrative that ran a few years ago that there weren't enough quality players to fill the teams.

You see ourselves and Toulouse, we get picked off every year. Every year that we're successful, we go to Super League and people turn around and say, actually, that Bill Leyland is a bit of a player, or Oli Leyland. We gave Josh Rourke a great opportunity, he wasn't one of our products, but we gave him an opportunity and you can see him flourishing now. You look at the amount of players in the game from Toulouse, Catalans and ourselves, because we have to produce our own players.

In terms of the rugby union convert, I think it's a massive conversation. I've had a lot of conversations with Phil Jones, who was here for 15 years and a legend of this club, Head of Youth. And Rob Powell, who had been many guise at the club, he was a Head of Youth as well. I just asked them an open and honest question about where do you think this club is best suited to pitch? They both came back with a lot of the same answers, but there was one conflict in one around rugby union players. I won't tell you which way it was. And one of them said, yeah, I think you could get some real value out of some converts. The other one said, well, actually, we've always struggled to turn their heads because a lot of the rugby union players that we had in the system also were in private school education and the private school education fees were a lot more than what we were offering those players.

So when it came to exam time in the summers, we lost those players to exams. Parents were saying, well no, they need to go and do their exams over this contract that you've got at London Broncos. So I thought that was fascinating. We quickly found ourselves being third fiddle.

Question: Are the club going to start running a travel club or something similar with some pick-ups across London to take people to away games?

GH: Good question. Well I think it should. I think part and parcel of the club is not only that you can go to away games but you can go to some away games as well…and I think there's nothing better for your education than an away trip to Yorkshire. I think it's part of your education to actually come along, to support your team at places like that. But moreover, it's actually quite an enjoyable experience and I found that a lot with the trips at Leeds, really good quality trips.

For one of the trips that we are going to be doing when we play York away later in August and there is going to be an excursion. When you get yourself a train to York, you will be met at the station, you stay at the Grand Hotel, which is a fabulous hotel, right in the centre of York. A cultural experience of spending time in the city of York. For those of you who haven't done it, there is plenty to do. We are going to dinner together in the evening with a guest speaker. It is a certain sort of thing that I really enjoy and get engaged in.

So that is very much part of the ambition of what we're looking to provide and to deliver and at the end of the day, you will need yourselves to actually support it and then make a judgement whether you like it or not. I'm pretty convinced that you will enjoy that type of experience.

Question; (To Mike) What are you doing differently this season to avoid yet another rebuild next year?

ME: Well, they were pretty big cracks six months ago. The white shirt that you guys and things like that, the way you (the fans) funded the club to keep us going, that was where we were at. I don't think people realise how close we were to the wall. So they're not just small cracks, they're big cracks.

But to be here today, to be hosting this, to have Gary in the position of the club that he is, is massive progress in a very quick time. Rebuilds have been part of all my time at the club, and the minute we've had some consistency and continuity, we've had success all the time. We saw a couple of guys earlier, the year we got promoted in 2018, we actually lost 350k's worth of funding into the team that year. Danny (Ward) wasn't allowed to sign a single player, but what we did have was great consistency underneath that, and we got promoted.

Obviously we got Super League 2019, spending not a lot of money, but we got great consistency, we won 10 games, whilst we didn't stay up. You know, I still perceived that to be success. Right now it's a matter of avoiding relegation, we can't get away from that.

I would like to keep as many players at the club as possible. In 2023 when we got promoted, I kept a lot of those players for last year. We were hoping we'd get a bit more funding on top of the players that we kept, obviously. This year's no different. We've got a relegation fight at the minute.

Question; The Broncos fans came together for this ‘Back the Broncos Membership’ when there was obviously an immediate threat to the future of the club. He wonders if we can build on this spirit of the fans and club together, maybe a fan on the board. Would you encourage the setting up of a support club that would work closely with the club and perhaps help with some fundraising efforts as well?

GH: I think the success of the organization is the collective role and support of everybody. I want to encourage as many people to be as proactive and as supportive as possible. We need a whole range of volunteers to actually create a movement of support for London Broncos and enjoy that support as well.

As I said, my job is really to harness that collective support and I think it touches so many different aspects of what we need to achieve. We need sponsors, we need commercial partners. People might be able to help. You might work at an organisation. You might be able to encourage them to have a meeting with us and listen to what we're going to say because what Rugby League in London can offer is not only ultimately high quality and high-end corporate hospitality and advertising, the community as well. 

We will be very much engaged with the community. We will be given opportunities for boys, girls, women and men to be able to participate in the sport. This is not about just one individual. It's about a collective. Everybody's got a job to do. The players have got a job to do. The coaching staff's got a job to do.

Everybody within the organisation has got a job to do. And everybody that's a supporter of our club has also got a job to do.

To become an evangelist, and that's a great word. An evangelist. I used the word ambassador earlier.

It's the same word. An evangelist for the game. It's a great game we've got. We should be proud of the game. And an evangelist for the club. The club's got a proud history. A proud history and we need to actually evangelise what London Broncos means to the sport and means to the community. We've all got the role to play that.

Question: Thank you, Gary. It's great to see you involved. A lot of people I know well through a lot of years are here and we've been here a number of times before. I think what's different and positive to build on is this time we already have a culture in place. Our culture is largely due to Mr. Eccles there and to Will and all the guys who pull on the jersey.

You've seen that as the owner of an opposition side last year who we took to the wire in both games. A team that will fight to the death and that inspires its supporters. And that I think for a number of us, the thing that swung this club, the fact that we're here tonight as much as anything else is Mike Eccles giving his commitment to this club. 

You mentioned talks about an ownership group or an investment group. Without breaking any commercial confidentiality, are you able to shed a bit more light on where those discussions are and what the sort of boxes that need to be ticked to make those things reality?

GH: No! That answers that question, doesn’t it?

Originally, I was contacted when David Hughes was going to be stepping out of the club, they didn't know of anybody who was interested in taking over London Broncos. They asked me and my answer was, no. I did have a conversation with David, and ultimately, you know, what I said is I would look to try and bring an ownership group together, because it's more than a one-man job.

So, for quite a number of months, I've been speaking to people who've got a genuine interest in becoming a shareholder and owner of the Broncos and what we actually need is people who've got something to offer,

people who can invest in the club, but what we don't need is sleeping partners. We want people who can invest in the club and make an ongoing contribution, and that can be in a variety of different ways.

It might be as a sponsor, it might be with a particular expertise, it might be their connectivity with the industry or potential sponsors. It could be in any way, but they need to be able to demonstrate an ability to continue to support the club throughout his journey and to support the vision of the club.

So we're looking to bring together, in many ways it's quite an exciting project because we started with one piece of paper. There's quite a number of people that's come forward that were interested in becoming an investor but they didn't offer enough to take the club forward.

So I'm hoping to create a really significant and substantial ownership group that can support the vision of the club. That needs to be supported by a whole range of commercial sponsors, commercial partners that can actually add value to the operation and the organisations.

But at the same time take advantage of what our sports can offer. So there are different layers of creativity that we need to put in place. It's not a job that's going to get dealt with in a week. It's an ongoing process. But it's important to get it right and everybody will come on board for that reason.

So in answer to your question, there is quite a bit of commitment to this organisation which I'm really pleased about. That gives me the confidence to actually move forward and tackle some of the really key issues that we've got now. How do we get away from the relegation zone? How can we improve the resources? How can we improve the quality of the squad? How can we improve the quality and the infrastructure of the organisation?

There are so many things that need to be done. They can all be addressed as we go on the journey. But fundamentally we do need funding and we do need an ownership group that can make a difference. So I'm pretty confident that we're going to be doing that in the foreseeable future.

Question: I'd like to start by saying thank you to Jason (Loubser), the back-room team, for sticking by us. Will (Lovell), the three or four other players that stuck by us without knowing if we would have a club. 

I'd like to address the elephant in the room, IMG. What's going on with that? Have we got better communication with them now? Are they looking at expanding the parameters?

GH: I think IMG is an interesting subject. There's a lot of misconception about IMG. IMG is purely an advisor. They have no constitutional power whatsoever. They can't make any decision. Anything that they recommend is going to be effectively approved by the clubs and agreed by the clubs.

So they come into the sport and they are advocating that the sport should do this, that and the other. And I agree with what they are recommending. But of course the sport doesn't have the money to actually fund the sort of things that they are advocating. So one of the problems within the game generally is that it does lack investment. It lacks having money to be able to fuel growth which is undoubtedly there.

So all of IMG are, at the end of the day, advisors. And they are advised on the grading criteria. I agree in principle with the grading criteria because then what it does is an external examination of your business that tells you what you succeeded in and what you could do better. So even a club like Leeds Rhinos, who actually takes most of the boxes, is a good exercise because it identifies areas that they could do better. 

Question: When we go to Super League games, Championship games, at half-time there are always kids playing, disability games playing. We do nothing at Wimbledon.

If you get kids playing at half-time, mum's coming, dad's coming, uncle's coming, granddad's coming because they want to see the kids and we might even see some talent there.

GH: No, that's a really good point. I don't know what the arrangement is with the football club, but what I do know is what happens at Leeds and we've got a foundation and they organise all of that.

I would like to see the London Rugby League Foundation lead on this and I have spoken with Richard Jones, the chairman, and he's very ambitious about what he believes the foundation can do. But they've got to be an integral part into what we deliver to the community.

At Leeds Rhinos, we have the Leeds Rhinos Foundation and that's a terrific organisation. It's a very, strong-born of trustees. It oversees schools and development in the city. It supports the 29 community groups in the city.

It delivers coaching, education, and it delivers all the pre-match entertainment and presentation. Before the game, you'll see a whole variety of engagement on the pitch, which is a marvellous experience for those youngsters that are involved.

You're quite right that each of those youngsters bring their family members. How good is that? At half-time, there's engagement on the pitch as well, which is good entertainment, but it's also a marvellous experience for those youngsters to play in front of the crowd and be part of a matchday experience. And that's all managed and promoted and delivered by the Foundation.

I'd like to probably see the London Rugby League Foundation doing a similar sort of role in the future. And it's interesting that the Leeds Rhinos Foundation have teamed up with the London Foundation, so they will be working closely with them to actually advise and to be able to help them along their journey. 

Question; We met Matt Adamson at a couple of the games, is he still part of what is happening at the club?

GH: Matt is working back in Australia, working quite closely with a lot of Australian brands, in terms of actually creating part of the investment that we need in the sport, and making some major sponsors.

Because one of the things that we found with Australian companies is they're quite taken by London. They are quite taken by London and they're actually quite keen to have an involvement with London. So he's actually working behind the scenes, actually trying to manifest some of these partnerships.

Announcement: One of the previous answers was the mention of the London Rugby League Foundation. And a certain Rick Jones (chairman), as if by magic, is stood next to me.

Hi, I'm Rick Jones, I'm the chair of the London Rugby League Foundation. I just thought it might be helpful to just follow up on the question around on-pitch activity and getting all the kids playing.

My first comment is, I completely agree. It makes a massive difference. The second is, so the foundation was only reformed and back associated with the club in spring of last year. Since then, we have started to do as much as we can.

So last year we had primaries playing out here (Wimbledon pitch) before one of the games with a whole load of clubs from Elmbridge and Brentwood and Brixton, etc. We had primaries playing at the Stoop before the St Helens game and all the mascots before that. We had juniors and the U14s match playing before one of the games. 

So we're trying to do as much as we can and completely, completely agree with the principal. The restriction is around what we're allowed to do on the pitch and that is a restriction of the agreement with Wimbledon. So this year we've been much more limited because of AFC Wimbledon in the playoffs. Which meant that their home games continued much longer through the end of May. Because there's basically a window after the football season is finished before they're then going to take the pitch up anyway. Where we're then able to use it as much as possible. This year we actually just haven't been able to do that anywhere near as much.

We're trying to organise something at Ebsfleet, we'll see if that happens. I've been spending quite a bit of time pushing the RFL to make sure that at the Ashes Test at Wembley we are able to do as much as possible. Now unfortunately the answer that I've had back from them so far is their agreement with Wembley is we're not allowed to do on-pitch activity. And that is a great shame. So we're then left in a situation saying okay well what can we do?

I would like to thank the club here actually and I'd like to thank Jason Loubser and I think it has enabled a lot of those things to happen that have happened over the course of the last year and we're doing what we can and we need to make sure that we can do a lot more.



ENDS.