Toronto Wolfpack’s return crucial for Super Legaue growth, says Leeds Rhinos chief

The Canadian club controversially pulled out of the current 2020 season in July citing an inability to fulfil its fixtures due to financial and visa issues brought on by the coronavirus.

It wreaked havoc on the fixture list which had only just been released in readiness for the competition’s resumption after five months of shutdown.

It was an unedifying end to Wolfpack’s first season in Super League which started with the unveiling of dual-code superstar Sonny Bill Williams on a $10m contract but ended with players being left unpaid for months and the club’s very future in doubt.

Just four years after being formed amid a blaze of publicity as the first-ever trans-atlantic sports club, it looked like the 
exciting adventure and the promise it brought might already be over.

However, after multi-millionaire owner David Argyle essentially pulled the plug, Toronto chief executive Bob Hunter has been meeting with prospective new owners who he says are willing to take them on if they can remain in Super League in 2021.

Although some club owners are against the idea, it is understood there is a growing belief Wolfpack should be given another chance and it will be discussed at a Super League meeting today.

After celebrating the sport’s 125th birthday at the weekend, Hetherington believes – if the right checks are in place – they should get the green light to help ensure rugby league grows.

“I hope that boat hasn’t sailed and, if it has, it’d represent a huge missed opportunity for our game,” he told The Yorkshire Post.

“As long as I’ve been involved, we’ve been saying our game has got to start appealing to North Americans – the US and Canada.

“But as a game we have never had the investment to put into a venture like that.

“David Argyle actually put significant investment in and he has shown everybody in the sport what can be achieved.

“I went over there myself when they played Featherstone in last year’s Million Pound Game, not just to watch the match but to spend time in Toronto itself.

“I went around all the pubs and clubs beforehand, just to see for myself what sort of cut-through they’d actually achieved in the city. I was quite staggered – I really was – by just how much cut-through they’d enjoyed there.

“I know how difficult that is. I started Sheffield Eagles and it was so, so difficult, as it is for any new sport in any city.

“But rugby league has certainly achieved a great deal in Toronto and it’s such a shame for them for this to happen in their first season in Super League.

“From Rhinos, we were due to take loads of people to Toronto and for them to be denied any games at all in Toronto has just been quite cruel.

“In the meantime, of course, David Argyle has run out of money; it’s been a victim of the pandemic and the fact they take nothing at all from the central distribution of monies.

“But it’d be really disappointing for the game to lose the opportunity that it promised to deliver. Having said all that it can only go forward with new and very significant investment but the understanding I’ve got from Bob Hunter is that there’s been quite a number of Canadian-based interests.

“I’m hoping it comes to fruition and they as an entity can be preserved. The whole game should really want that.

“I said 25 years ago when Super League was born, that to fulfil our objectives we have to build and be more adventurous as a sport than simply relying on the clubs we had 100 years ago.

“If we don’t we will be a small entity. That’s still the reality.”

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James Mitchinson