Hull KR may have been crowned the new world champions \u2013 but it\u2019s not enough to convince former prop Willie Mason that the Robins would finish anywhere but bottom in the NRL.<\/p>\n
Rovers stunned the world last week after beating Brisbane Broncos to claim the World Club Challenge for the very first time. It prompted a fierce debate after the game about how they and other leading Super League clubs would cope in the NRL.<\/p>\n
Brisbane coach Michael Maguire seemed to hint he thought the Robins would perform well \u2013 but Mason and Levels co-host Justin Horo seemingly disagree.<\/p>\n
Mason, who had a stint with Hull KR in the latter stages of his playing career, insisted that NRL clubs simply do not care about the World Club Challenge like English teams, and in the week-to-week grind of the competition in Australia, Rovers would stand no chance of competing.<\/p>\n
He said: \u201cBecause we (the NRL) don\u2019t care as much about the game. You go over there and smash the drink all week and turn up.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know they keep beating us but they\u2019re not better than us. There\u2019s no way. If you put Hull KR in the NRL, (they would get the) wooden spoon. For that one game, they get up when we\u2019re just not on that level. It means so much more to them, they smashed the Broncos.\u201d<\/p>\n
His thoughts were echoed by former Wakefield Trinity forward Horo, who insisted Rovers would be dead last if they were to have a crack at the NRL.<\/p>\n
\u201cHull KR would get the spoon in the NRL and whilst I do believe that, it\u2019s not like they\u2019re complete mugs,\u201d he said. \u201cI still think that they would run the table in New South Wales and Queensland Cups.<\/p>\n
\u201cSome of these players like Jez Litten and Mikey Lewis have got NRL potential. There\u2019s a heap over there. Potential is the word though because you might not be able to do it week in and week out but you can get up for a game and ambush them.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hull KR may have been crowned the new world champions \u2013 but it\u2019s not enough to convince former…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":447978,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5903,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-447977","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-rugby","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447977","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=447977"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447977\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/447978"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=447977"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=447977"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=447977"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}