Hull KR owner makes bold challenge to squad as Wembley emotions revealed

Aaron Bower
Neil Hudgell

Hull KR owner Neil Hudgell with the Challenge Cup trophy.

Hull KR owner Neil Hudgell has challenged his players to emulate the club’s heroes of the 1980s and be remembered as much more than a team who wins just one trophy: while also revealing his own emotional response to last weekend’s Challenge Cup win.

Speaking for the first time since their victory over Warrington, exclusively to Love Rugby League, Hudgell admitted he was readying himself to deliver a rallying call to Rovers’ players to respond to yet another major final defeat as they trailed in the final moments at Wembley.

But Tom Davies’ late try and Mikey Lewis’ conversion secured a first trophy since 1985, and a first of Hudgell’s lengthy tenure as owner, having ploughed millions into the club and navigated them through several financial crises.

Leading figures including coach Willie Peters and captain Elliot Minchella paid tribute to Hudgell both before and after the match and now, the Rovers owner has urged them to become one of the club’s all-time great sides.

He told Love Rugby League: “I remember the comments in the late-1990s about there being no room for Hull KR and I was just starting to get involved then. I always thought: we’ll show you. It’s taken a heck of a long time to do that.

“I don’t want to diminish this success but I want to put it in its place. It’s a fabulous achievement and needs to be celebrated on its own terms but we don’t want to be remembered was a team that won one trophy.

“There’s a lot of teams that can bat above their weight, win a trophy and slide away. We want to be remembered as the second great team that Hull KR have had.

“They won the 1980 Challenge Cup, 1981 Premiership and back-to-back Championships in 1984 and 1985 – and they beat Queensland. Willie is all on board with that message and the players understand that our job now is to see this as a platform to become the next great Hull KR team.

“Now, let’s go emulate the greats.”

Rovers return home on Friday night to Craven Park for what is bound to be an emotional evening, as they parade the cup after their game against Catalans Dragons.

Hudgell grew up watching the great Rovers side of the early-1980s led by Roger Millward and admitted there were moments he felt those days would never return, especially after having felt ‘destroyed’ by their humiliating 2015 Challenge Cup final loss to Leeds, when they were defeated 50-0.

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“2015 was a car crash,” he said. “We were happy to be at Wembley it was a one-off and we were never really quite good enough. It destroyed me for a number of years and I was hugely embarrassed for a very long time.

“But this has felt different for a few years now. It’s only really since we’ve changed things with Paul (Lakin), Willie and Paul Sewell coming in that I’ve really got any sort of semblance of love back for it.”

Hudgell also admitted he was proud that the club have been able to deliver success for the east Hull area as a whole – with the community likely to turn out in force at Craven Park on Friday evening.

“We had the civic reception on Sunday but it only really became real when the bus set off from Craven Park past my old school – which is no longer there. Then I went past the area where I grew up with my grandparents – which is no longer there.

“Then the old Craven Park: it’s not there anymore. And The Crown pub, which was the heart of the community.. it’s no longer there.

“Things change, but people and memories don’t. Rob Crossland, Phil Lowe, all the people who couldn’t be there.. this is for them.”

Hudgell continued: “East Hull is a gritty, marginalised and under-represented community. It’s very often the underdog and the part of the city that often misses out.

“The east feels it gets a raw deal and therefore to have a champion club in its midst is a wonderful thing. The people of Hull tend to be working class and these are difficult times for people with making ends meet and worries about debt and health issues.

“It’s the distraction from that which gives people meaning in life. We’ve been able to give people that.”

And Hudgell admitted that to be able to share Saturday’s victory with his own family, having watched Rovers win multiple trophies in the 1980s with the grandparents who first took him to Craven Park, will live with him forever.

“My grandparents took me to Rovers and introduced me to ten years of greatness and a good number of years of mediocrity,” he smiled.

“You wonder what you introduce your kids into. But I take the most pleasure from my grandchildren. I was given the cup on Saturday and I made sure they lifted it with me.

“I gave it to their dad on Saturday night and said, let them wake up with it. That’s beautiful and it makes it all worthwhile.”

And Hudgell closed with a wonderful story that sums up how the victory has touched so many people locally.

“I went to the cemetery on Monday opposite Craven Park with the cup to show it to my grandparents, and a lady was tending to two graves. One was her son, and one was her dad.

“She looked at me wide-eyed and in shocked, she’s a big Rovers fans. She asked if her family could have a picture with the Challenge Cup so I took it over and sat there with generations of her family.

“She said it made her week. That’s demonstrative of what this all means to folk. Let’s enjoy this, and let’s go and do it again.”

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