{"id":520673,"date":"2026-04-09T02:36:16","date_gmt":"2026-04-09T02:36:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/520673\/"},"modified":"2026-04-09T02:36:16","modified_gmt":"2026-04-09T02:36:16","slug":"gary-hetherington-talks-london-broncos-2027-super-league-ambition-as-main-challenge-revealed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/520673\/","title":{"rendered":"Gary Hetherington talks London Broncos’ 2027 Super League ambition as main challenge revealed"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

London Broncos\u2019 part-owner Gary Hetherington has spoken about the club\u2019s 2026 Super League snub as well as their ambitions for 2027.<\/p>\n

The decision to expand Super League to 14 teams<\/a> offered hope to clubs such as London that they could earn promotion to the top tier with 12 clubs decided by IMG gradings, as had been set out at the start of the season, and two others promoted as part of an application process.<\/p>\n

London were among the clubs who applied to enter Super League but ultimately they missed out to Toulouse Olympique and York Knights<\/a>, both of whom had ranked next best on IMG anyway, with the Broncos sat in 16th<\/a> behind relegated Salford Red Devils.<\/p>\n

Many had expected the Broncos to be promoted with the club actually having recruited as if they would have been in Super League with a number of NRL stars having made the switch. As such, it\u2019s been a fairly dominant start to the season for them in the Championship with London having won every game with relative ease.<\/p>\n

Speaking on Sky Sports\u2019\u00a0The Bench Podcast<\/a>,\u00a0Hetherington gave his assessment of his first few months being involved with the club, stating:\u00a0\u201cThings are going well, the rugby is very solid. We have a very strong squad of players and we have an outstanding training facility that used to belong to London Irish rugby union club.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve got an outstanding coach in Jason Demetriou, Danny Ward is back in the fold as well so the rugby side is very solid but the real challenge is to build a business and a support base.\u201d<\/p>\n

London Broncos building for possible 2027 Super League entry<\/p>\n

That challenge of building a business is being aided massively by the club\u2019s majority owners, Grant Wecshel and Darren Lockyer, both of whom have strong connections with Weschel an established businessman and Lockyer one of the game\u2019s greatest ever players.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe arrival of Grant Wecshel and Darren Lockyer is significant because they\u2019ve got an ambition for the club to be successful as well,\u201d Hetherington said of the pair before addressing whether he was surprised London didn\u2019t make the Super League grade in 2026.<\/p>\n

He responded: \u201cI thought London would have got the vote to go in because I think we\u2019d have been competitive in Super League. In some respects that creates a bit more time to build the operation we need to build.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asked if that frustrated him, the 70-year-old admitted:\u00a0\u201cI was a bit (frustrated) because I feel that we would have been ready to go,\u201d however, he underlined the positive aspects of missing out \u2013 namely having the time to build an organisation that can enter the competition for 2027.<\/p>\n

Hetherington explained: \u201cThe extra time that we\u2019ve now got, with a winning team because I think you need to build a winning culture, is helpful and we\u2019re hoping to be in Super League next year.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the time of writing, it\u2019s expected that Super League will remain a 14-team competition with IMG grading being the basis for the competition\u2019s make-up, however, that\u2019s not concrete.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"London Broncos\u2019 part-owner Gary Hetherington has spoken about the club\u2019s 2026 Super League snub as well as their…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":520674,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5903,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-520673","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-rugby","8":"tag-rugby","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/520673","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=520673"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/520673\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/520674"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=520673"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=520673"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=520673"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}