On Sunday at the home of AFC Wimbledon, a rebranded, refreshed and resurrected London Broncos will make their Championship rugby league debut under new ownership.
After former owner David Hughes put the club up for sale in 2024, the Broncos were staring down the barrel of extinction, a fate visited on a number of sports clubs over recent seasons.
But then a group came along from the world’s strongest rugby league market: Australia.
Spearheaded by Brisbane Broncos and NRL legend Darren Lockyer, and supported by mining tycoon Grant Wechsel and former Leeds Rhinos chief executive Gary Hetherington, they are this year hoping to go on a cup run, and to return the club to the Super League, where they would be the only English side south of Warrington.
“It’s important to London,” Wechsel tells City AM ahead of this weekend’s Championship opener against Widnes Vikings.
“From a game point of view we think it’s important for English rugby league that there’s a successful footprint in the capital. It just makes sense from a geographic point of view and it makes sense financially and for television broadcast.
“If we succeed, we want to have a friendly between Brisbane and London one day.”
London Broncos plans
And that’s not the only big idea Wechsel and the London Broncos have for the coming years. They’re looking to play more games at the Stoop, home of Prem Rugby team Harlequins, as well as aiming to tap into the Australian expat community in the capital.
Given a contingent of players from Papua New Guinea are now at the team – who have taken over London Irish’s Hazlewood training centre – Wechsel says the club will stream matches back to the Indo-Pacific island.
He also wants a North vs South match, potentially at Fulham’s Craven Cottage, and more. But the short-term goal is not just a return to the Super League but winning it. And they need to prove that the Cherry Red Records Stadium, affectionately known as Plough Lane, can function as a profitable option which new and existing fans can buy into.
“There’s an existing fan base that has gone through the ups and downs, and they’re obviously pretty excited about what’s happening and we want to repay their faith and put on a great product for them,” Wechsel adds.
Name of the game
“But we’ve been saying the whole time, to get a new crowd there and to make it a larger, more sustainable audience for us, we need to provide a different experience than just relying on the team winning.
“We’ve got James Haskell, the ex-rugby player, as the DJ and we’ve got Big Bosh John at the game [this weekend]. There’s a number of high profile Australians attending the match too.
“When you go to the football here, I find the best part is the crowd singing themselves at the start and the end. But there’s no half time show in it, there’s no entertainment because they don’t need to. So if we’re trying to attract Londoners to the game, we’ve said that we’ll go out of our way to make the matchday experience enjoyable.”
Rugby league remains key to the capital; Wembley Stadium hosts the annual Challenge Cup final and last year staged the first Ashes Test in front of a record crowd.
But London Broncos has struggled to compete with the sport’s northern heartlands. Wechsel, Lockyer and Hetherington are looking to turn the tide and develop a title challenging team.
The ambition is admirable, but the results matter. And those will come thick and fast after this weekend’s opener in Wimbledon.