Men’s Celtic Cup Fixtures
Round 1 – Saturday 17 October – Scotland v Ireland, Hawick RFC (kick off 3pm)
Round 2 – Saturday 24 October – Scotland v Wales, Biggar RFC (1pm)
Round 3 – Saturday 31 October – Wales v Ireland, The Wern, Merthyr Tydfil (3pm)
Brian McDermott has confirmed legendary duo Sean O’Loughlin and Paul Wellens as his England assistant coaches ahead of this year’s Rugby League World Cup.
McDermott was named as Shaun Wane’s successor in April on a short-term contract to cover this year’s tournament Down Under, with England kicking off their campaign against Tonga on Saturday, October 17 before facing France and Papua New Guinea in the group stages.
The former Leeds Rhinos boss has now assembled his backroom staff, including Wigan and St Helens legends O’Loughlin and Wellens.
O’Loughlin captained England during his illustrious career, winning 25 international caps, as well as 11 for Great Britain. St Helens icon and former club captain Wellens won 32 caps for England and Great Britain.
“We’ve had a lot of contact,” McDermott explained.
“We jump on a Teams call and we’ve done a tonne of phone calls, just us three together, talking about squads, talking about tactics, defensive strategies, state of the game - everything we’ve covered.
“I shared some phone calls with Lockers (O'Loughlin) individually, as I have with Wello (Wellens), and they’ve been great.
“You’ve got to bear in mind that they’ve been two of the best players we’ve produced as a country and, arguably, they have been two of the better performers internationally that we’ve produced.
“No matter whether the game has been won or lost, those two have always come out of the international arena with their heads held high, so I’ve learned a ton off them over the last few months about rep football and international football, and the mentality towards World Cup squads and how things should be done.
“They’ve been very helpful and very respectful, and they’re both full-time, Wello with the Cowboys and Lockers with Wigan, so I’ve got to be careful about texting them at 2am in the morning or 2pm in the afternoon and asking for Zoom calls.
“They’re not really getting paid for it, which hasn’t really been a problem for them at all. They’ve never mentioned it, but I’ve been mindful of leaning on them too much, really, but they’ve been great, they’ve been awesome.”
EDIT: As pointed out by u/shorelined in the comments, the first regions outside of Australia and New Zealand have been confirmed by the IRL. Premier Sports have the rights in South East Asia and Canada.
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Not sure if this is worthy of it's own post, but broadcast deals get me excited!
Danny Kazandjian is the IRL Secretary General according to his LinkedIn (I didn't know until I Googled him).
I've just found this Lego Minifigure builder online, and on a whim I wanted to see if it had any RL representation in the sports options, and to my surprise it had all (but one) current Super League sides as options. Toulouse is missing, it has the rugby union club instead. There is an option for a custom team, you upload a reference of your team and they seem to make it bespoke for you, so Championship/NRL/TOXIII fans can get in on this too, I think!
It also has the big rugby union international sides, but no club rugby union.
I'm not connected to the website in any way, I literally came across this at random, I don't even own any lego myself. Not sure if this counts as promotional, deliberately cropped out the url in case this is against the rules.
Can't see any other sources reporting on this, personally I'm not a fan of this unconfirmed new deal.
More money, but only 2 matches a week guaranteed to be shown, with the possibility of other broadcasters picking up the slack. There's no guarantee that anyone else will pick up the slack, so that probably means much less visibility.
I look forward to the official announcement, and if anyone else has any other sources, please share!
Saints' injury crisis continues
Stade Pierre Fabre (just outside Toulouse), 12,300 capacity.
All sounds hopeful, but Rhodri also says theyve got some "great financial partners" this year, and all I can think of is the AI generated horrible betting website that promises to change your life for little to no monetary input that just preys off the working class fanbase of rugby league in this country.