Wigan and St Helens’ southern connections broaden League’s appeal

http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2014/oct/04/st-helens-wigan-southern-connections-grand-final

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London Broncos have been relegated from the Super League after 18 seasons, but Saturday’s Grand Final will confirm that all is not lost for the game in the south. St Helens will include an increasingly influential forward from Lewisham, who will relish the clash with an old mucker from Gravesend, while one of Wigan’s main attacking weapons is a 21-year-old centre from Hertfordshire who could easily be a bolter in England’s Four Nations squad when it is announced on Sunday.

That will provide some consolation to Brian McDermott, the Leeds coach who has had the unfamiliar feeling of a watching brief at the business end of the Super League season after the Rhinos were shocked by the Catalans in the first round of the play-offs.

McDermott spent five years coaching in the capital before joining Leeds in 2011, and is relishing the prospect of watching Louie McCarthy-Scarsbrook, Tony Clubb and Dan Sarginson walk into sport’s original Lancastrian derby in the cauldron of Old Trafford on Saturday night.

“I keep telling people, rugby league in London isn’t the problem, it never has been,” said McDermott. “It’s a well-liked sport, participation levels continue to grow, and the development of lads like Louie, Tony and Dan – plus lots of others like Kieran Dixon who’s coming up to Hull KR next year, and Mike McMeeken [who will play for Castleford next season] – shows how stupid we would be to give up on it.

“The problem has been the professional team, which for the last 10 or 15 years has been struggling. I think that going down to the Championship next season is the best thing that can happen to them.”

McDermott vividly remembers his early encounters with McCarthy-Scarsbrook and Clubb, who are now in their late 20s. “We all think the world ends in the north, don’t we, and when I first went down there mixing with these lads it was like walking on to a scene from Snatch.

“Louie had a lot to say from the start, surprisingly so for someone who hadn’t grown up with the sport. He’d been told at school that he was crap at both codes of rugby and stuck in goals at football, which he didn’t mind too much because he’s a passionate Millwall fan. But then he got into rugby league with the Greenwich Admirals amateur club and really took to it. He’s never been a wallflower – one of those I call a trenches bloke, because you’d want him in there with you.

“Clubby had come up from Kent, and also played a bit for the Admirals, and when I first got to the club he was a winger. But he was as aggressive as it gets – all he wanted to do was come out of the defensive line and smash people. With that attitude and his physique, it’s not a huge surprise that he’s ended up in the forwards. But that takes some doing in rugby league, especially when you throw in coming north to tough schools like St Helens and Wigan. Him and Louie deserve massive credit for what they’ve achieved.”

However, it is Sarginson who has the potential to be a real breakthrough player for league in London and the south – it is surely only a matter of time before he takes his partnership on the left with Wigan’s thrilling winger Joe Burgess to the international stage. “Unlike the other two, who were converts relatively late on, Dan has grown up playing league,” McDermott says. “I remember him and another lad who’s played for the Broncos this year, Mikey Bishay, impressing all the coaches at our junior camps with their attitude as much as their skills.”

Shaun Wane, the coach of the champions, may be the Wiganer’s Wiganer, but he has shown imagination as well as judgment in recruiting Sarginson and Clubb from the south, and Ben Flower and Gil Dudson from Wales, to help replace the various senior players who have left the club for various reasons in recent years. It may have been a tough year for rugby league expansionists, but even a Wigan-Saints Grand Final offers them plenty to celebrate.