September is a special month for Rugby League fans on both sides of the globe, as the focus on Play-Offs, Grand Finals and International Rugby League intensifies – and there’s plenty of British interest in the climax to the NRL and NRLW campaigns down under.
Four members of Shaun Wane’s England squad from last autumn’s World Cup – Herbie Farnworth, Dom Young, Victor Radley and Elliott Whitehead – are preparing for the start of the NRL Play-Offs this weekend.
The NRLW Play-Offs are still a couple of weeks away, but Georgia Roche’s Newcastle Knights are looking good for a semi final spot in second, and Hollie-Mae Dodd’s Canberra Raiders are very much in contention.
And that’s not where the British influence ends.
As League Express editor Martyn Sadler points out in his column today, three NRL clubs looked north for off-field assistance ahead of the 2023 campaign, with Brisbane Broncos appointing Lee Briers to their coaching staff, New Zealand Warriors recruiting Richard Agar, and Newcastle Knights bringing in Brian McDermott.
Is it a coincidence that all three have been big improvers this season, bouncing back from a failure to qualify for the play-offs in 2022 to finish second, fourth and fifth in the 2023 NRL table?
Sky Sports will again be providing a huge autumn bonus for League fans with live coverage of all the play-offs fixtures in both the NRL and NRLW competitions.
That will start this Friday morning in front of more than 50,000 fans at Brisbane’s Suncorp Stadium, when Farnworth and Briers will provide the British interest for a Broncos team who take on Craig Bellamy’s Melbourne Storm.
The following morning, there’s a mouthwatering double header. It kicks off at 7am British time, as the Warriors cross the Tasman to face Penrith Panthers at their BlueBet Stadium stronghold – a daunting task, but not an impossible one, as St Helens proved in the World Club Challenge at the start of the year.
That’s followed by the first knockout game of the weekend, as Radley’s Roosters make the much shorter journey to Sydney’s southern beaches to face Cronulla Sharks.
Finally on Sunday morning, at another sold-out ground with a crowd of over 30,000 guaranteed in League-mad Newcastle, Dom Young will make his play-off debut against a Canberra team captained by Whitehead – with Brian McDermott, whose distinguished career in the Bradford Bulls pack ended seven years before Whitehead launched his career at Odsal, watching alongside Adam O’Brien in the Knights coaching box.
There could be more British interest in the Newcastle team, with the former Salford, Wigan and Great Britain half-back Jackson Hastings in contention to return after injury.
And the play-offs will also feature numerous players hoping to be heading for England this autumn as part of the Tongan squad who will play an historic three-Test series in St Helens, Huddersfield and Leeds – although Tonga’s head coach Kristian Woolf and captain Jason Taumalolo will be reluctant spectators for the next month following the failure of the Dolphins or the North Queensland Cowboys to make the eight.
