How ambitious Hull spreading the 15-a-side gospel in a rugby league stronghold

The city of Hull, for so long a rugby league hotbed, has a union team on the verge of winning promotion to National League One.

The team that bears the city’s name have a nine-point lead at the top of National League Two as they seek to reach the third tier for the first time, having formed out of a merger of East Riding clubs in the early 1990s. Their biggest challengers are the team that come to Hull’s Chanterlands Avenue home ground today – Rotherham Titans – a team heading in the opposite direction until they finally bottomed out their own freefall through the divisions.

Quite whether Hull are equipped to ape what Rotherham did nearly two and a half decades ago and make it to the Premiership is a question for another time. Just ask Doncaster Knights how nigh-on impossible that objective is – leading the second-tier Championship but informed this week by the Rugby Football Union that their ground wasn’t big enough to host Premiership rugby.

But back to Hull, who need to take care of their own business, irrespective of what other clubs in Yorkshire are doing.

“We’re about a year ahead of schedule,” explains Richard Gore, the club’s press officer who has been in and around the club for much of their existence.

“There’s a restructuring coming so we thought me might be ready in time for that, it means there’s only one team that goes up this year instead of the second-placed team getting a second chance in the play-offs.”

Hull snook into a top-half finish in the 16-team division last season and when they lost their first game of the season there was no suggestion of the run they would go on. “Gary Pearce, our head coach and former Wales league and union international who took Hull Ionians into the third tier a few years back, said he was targeting top-four at the start of the season,” continued Gore.

“And we’ve been lucky with players. Some good players moved to the area including Simon Humberstone, our goal-kicker, captain and fly-half. But after that defeat in the first game we’ve lost only once in 20 games.”

The team that beat them back in late October was Rotherham Titans, by five points at Clifton Lane.

Gain revenge today in front of an anticipated crowd of 500 and Hull could move as far as 14 points clear with eight games remaining.

“It would mean a lot to the community and to the whole club,” added Gore. “A lot of people put a lot of time and effort in to this club.”