{"id":380159,"date":"2025-12-30T09:56:09","date_gmt":"2025-12-30T09:56:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/380159\/"},"modified":"2025-12-30T09:56:09","modified_gmt":"2025-12-30T09:56:09","slug":"the-five-rugby-league-personalities-of-2025-total-rugby-league","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/380159\/","title":{"rendered":"The five rugby league personalities of 2025 \u2013 Total Rugby League"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

After each season, the League Express Rugby League Yearbook selects five personalities who helped shaped the game that year. Here were the selections for 2025\u2026<\/p>\n

Willie Peters<\/p>\n

Hull Kingston Rovers couldn\u2019t have achieved more in 2025, backing up their Challenge Cup win and League Leaders\u2019 Shield with a commanding victory over their 2024 nemesis Wigan in the Super League Grand Final.<\/p>\n

Five days before Old Trafford glory, the Robins\u2019 head coach Willie Peters was named Super League Coach of the Year for the second consecutive season, this year guiding his side to their first League Leaders\u2019 Shield and their first Challenge Cup triumph since 1980. Rovers\u2019 first Championship title since 1985 was the best possible way to end the domestic year.<\/p>\n

The Coach of the Year was determined by a poll of the twelve Super League head coaches and there weren\u2019t many fans of the game who would have denied Peters the accolade.<\/p>\n

Peters\u2019 first season in charge was 2023, as Hull KR reached the Challenge Cup Final before losing to Leigh in golden point. The year after they made the Grand Final, where Bevan French\u2019s brilliance resulted in the narrow defeat by Wigan.<\/p>\n

Close but not close enough in 2024. But the disappointment was well and truly banished in 2025.<\/p>\n

The rise of the Robins has been nothing short of spectacular. The new Craven Park has developed into one of the most exciting venues in Rugby League and the pride of the community in its Rugby League team is almost tangible. For a club that has narrowly avoided liquidation, overcome administration, bounced in and out of the top division and finished bottom of the table as recently as 2020 (albeit in the first year of Covid in an 11-team competition after the demise of Toronto) Hull KR\u2019s current standing is remarkable.<\/p>\n

There has been some canny decision making along the way. But it was the inspired appointment of former Gateshead and Wigan scrum-half Willie Peters as head coach at the end of the 2022 season that made the glorious year of 2025 possible.<\/p>\n

Paul McShane<\/p>\n

York Knights were elevated into the expanded 14-team Super League for 2026. Along with Toulouse Olympique the Knights were chosen from nine applicants by a panel chaired by non-executive board member Lord Caine. The Panel\u2019s decision meant top tier Rugby League would return to the city of York for the first time since the 1985-86 season.<\/p>\n

A condition of York\u2019s entry into Super League is that the elevated clubs will get half of the distribution that goes to the twelve other top-graded clubs in 2026.<\/p>\n

The Knights, who rose from the ashes of the defunct York Wasps in 2002, had an outstanding 2025, securing their first ever win at Wembley Stadium in the AB Sundecks 1895 Cup in June, then finishing top of the Championship table, only to suffer a two-point Grand Final defeat by Toulouse.<\/p>\n

Coach Mark Applegarth made some shrewd signings to get them to the top of the pile. But the most significant turned out to be hooker Paul McShane, who after 16 seasons as a professional with Leeds, Wakefield and Castleford, had called a day on his full-time career.<\/p>\n

All three nominations for Championship Player of the Year were Knights players with McShane, captain and halfback Liam Harris and non-stop prop Jordan Thompson also on the shortlist decided by a poll of the 13 Championship head coaches.<\/p>\n

Five years earlier as a Castleford player McShane had been chosen as the best player in the whole British game when he was named Steve Prescott Man of Steel in 2020. He created a unique double when he was named the Championship\u2019s best for 2025.<\/p>\n

It had been in no way plain sailing. As a star of the Leeds Rhinos Academy he made his debut in the first game of the 2009 season as a 19-year-old. After 63 games for the Rhinos over five seasons \u2013 with loan spells at Hull FC and Widnes and finishing the 2013 season playing on dual registration with Hunslet \u2013 McShane moved to Wakefield and then in July 2015 to Castleford. There, McShane found his home and established himself as the Tigers\u2019 most pivotal player over nine-and-a-half seasons at the Jungle.<\/p>\n

How useful that wealth of experience has been for the ambitious York Knights club.<\/p>\n

Jake Connor<\/p>\n

Jake Connor was named the Steve Prescott MBE Man of Steel as the outstanding player of the 2025 season. It was a remarkable achievement for an undoubtedly gifted player who, as he reached the age of 30 going into this year, had seemingly missed his chance to fulfil his huge potential.<\/p>\n

Connor finished last season having been allowed to leave Huddersfield Giants with a year left on a three-year contract, which he signed when he was offloaded by Hull FC. It was a surprise pick-up by seasoned Leeds coach Brad Arthur, who had proved himself able to get the best out of players during a decade as head coach at Parramatta. Arthur told Connor he wasn\u2019t fit enough and he would have to become a team player to get into his side.<\/p>\n

To his credit Connor accepted the coach\u2019s challenge and knuckled down, playing the first four rounds of Super League at fullback, the position he had occupied at the Giants, in the injury absence of Lachlan Miller before being switched to halfback.<\/p>\n

Always an instinctive talent, Connor\u2019s box of tricks, either with hand or foot, came into play to the benefit of the Rhinos fans, who saw their side finish in fourth spot, their highest placing since the Grand Final winning year of 2017.<\/p>\n

After almost 250 appearances over 12 seasons, including winning a Challenge Cup medal with Hull FC, where he spent six seasons, Connor had claims to be the most improved player in Super League in 2025. He became the first Leeds Rhinos player to be crowned Man of Steel since Zak Hardaker in 2015, and only the fourth in the 48 years since David Ward was the inaugural winner in 1977.<\/p>\n

To the dismay of some, Connor didn\u2019t make Shaun Wane\u2019s England squad for the Ashes series. Wane picked halfbacks who he thought were in better form, while leaving the door ajar for Connor to make the 2026 World Cup. Another season like the one he produced in 2025 should see him add to the eight caps he earned for England and Great Britain in 2018 and 2019.<\/p>\n

Paul Rowley<\/p>\n

It might seem strange for the head coach of a club that finished rock bottom of Super League to be chosen as a personality of the year. But Paul Rowley deserves to be included for sticking with Salford Red Devils as the club spiralled out of Rugby League\u2019s top flight in the most horrible of years.<\/p>\n

What a descent it was. The 2024 season had ended in a fourth-placed finish and a home eliminator defeat to Leigh. Within days that was followed by the announcement of a long-term plan for Rowley to move into a director of rugby role with assistant Kurt Haggerty to take over as head coach.<\/p>\n

But before too long news trickled out that Salford had requested and been given an advance payment of their 2025 central distribution money by the RFL to see them through the off season.<\/p>\n

It didn\u2019t seem to matter too much when the club was taken over by new owners, a deal that was given the green light by the RFL. Since then it was a tale of obfuscation, late staff and player payments, personnel departures and empty promises. And a thrice delayed winding up order from HMRC. Whatever the outcome of that, it was a sad fact, Salford would not be in Super League in 2026.<\/p>\n

In August, things reached a new low on the playing front as a Red Devils side made up of loan players went to Hull FC and were hammered 80-6. Rowley admitted he had met some of the players for the first time on the bus to the game. The week after, Salford cancelled their Super League fixture against Wakefield Trinity due to a shortage of available players.<\/p>\n

Astoundingly, they managed to pull off a shock 25-12 win away at Warrington Wolves.<\/p>\n

Haggerty then became the latest departure, though Rowley stayed on to the very end, a 52-16 final-round home defeat by Wakefield.<\/p>\n

Rowley had done what he could to give Red Devils fans a team to follow, which they did in spades. His only blot was to field a weak team that lost heavily to St Helens in round one which cost Salford two league points. In October he was appointed as successor to Paul Wellens as head coach of St Helens.<\/p>\n

Reece Walsh<\/p>\n

Reece Walsh was already a celebrity in Australia when he arrived in England for the 2025 Ashes series.<\/p>\n

Three weeks before, Walsh had won the Clive Churchill Medal as the outstanding player in the NRL Grand Final. The fullback scored a searing try, assisted three more and saved a string in defence to lead Brisbane Broncos to their first premiership in 19 years.<\/p>\n

It cemented and grew Walsh\u2019s popularity as a social media personality. Australian Rugby League Commission chairman Peter V\u2019landys had already acknowledged Walsh\u2019s star status. \u201cHe\u2019s got charisma and presence,\u201d he told Australian television in 2023. \u201cHe\u2019s the Justin Bieber of Rugby League. They look like brothers! He\u2019s just something out of the box; he\u2019s a brilliant player. He\u2019s just charisma on steroids.\u201d<\/p>\n

Walsh is no stranger to fame or to controversy. In 2021, whilst a New Zealand Warriors player, he pleaded guilty to possession of cocaine and obstructing police. He was handed a $5,000 fine and suspended for two matches by the NRL. In 2023, he was suspended for three matches for swearing at a referee during a game against the Gold Coast. In September 2025 he was reprimanded in a statement by his club for posting a video of himself drinking water from a toilet bowl: \u201cThe video represents a poor attempt at humour posted privately by Walsh. No one should take this video seriously or act upon the advice.\u201d<\/p>\n

After two tries in the Ashes opener at Wembley he looked dead set to be the player of the series, his pace was something above anything seen in Super League. As well as his scores and a long break at the start of the second half, he prevented two possible England tries with knockdowns of passes from Herbie Farnworth to Jack Welsby and Jake Wardle to Tom Johnstone.<\/p>\n

He never reached those heights in the next two matches, mixing brilliance with mistakes, but scored the last two tries of the series, untouched by defenders.<\/p>\n

The 23-year-old Walsh scored four of the eleven tries that Australia scored over three matches. And if Dally M Player of the Year James Tedesco had not made himself unavailable for the tour, he might not even have been selected by Kangaroos coach Kevin Walters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After each season, the League Express Rugby League Yearbook selects five personalities who helped shaped the game that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":380160,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-380159","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-rugby","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-rugby","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=380159"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380159\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/380160"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=380159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=380159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=380159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}