BY ROSS HEPPENSTALL
GARY HETHERINGTON spent over two hours at Emerald Headingley on Wednesday afternoon waxing lyrical to a handful of journalists about the past quarter of a century at Leeds Rhinos.
A fine raconteur when the mood takes him, the 67-year-old revelled in regaling stories of how he and Paul Caddick came to the rescue of the Loiners and transformed them into a formidable, all-conquering force on and off the field.
There were tales of how Leeds put club mascot Ronnie the Rhino as a parliamentary candidate in the Leeds North-West constituency in 1997, causing much angst among the Labour Party who feared they would lose vital votes in a marginal seat.(*Ronnie won 232 votes but Harold Best enjoyed a majority as Labour gained the seat from the Conservatives).
Today marks the 25-year anniversary since the two men from Castleford took over Leeds RL, as they were then known, so Hetherington could be forgiven for raising a glass to the club’s achievements during his and Caddick’s stewardship.
Leeds, of course, had not been champions since 1972 until Tony Smith led them to Grand Final glory in 2004, kickstarting an era of sustained success for the so-called Golden Generation.
Back then they were a club in decline, albeit one with potential flooding through their veins.
Eight Super League titles, four Challenge Cups and three World Club Challenge successes are testimony to the way in which Hetherington and Caddick have run the club.
But it goes deeper. The Rhinos have become a source of great pride within a sports-mad city and Headingley has become a world-class sports venue for rugby and cricket.
At the end of the first season of summer rugby in 1996, though, Leeds were a failing club at every level.
The stadium was crumbling, debts had spiralled to over £5million and they finished two places above relegated Workington Town.
At this stage, Hetherington and his wife Kath had been busy making a fist of it at Sheffield Eagles, the club they formed with £13,000 from Kath’s earnings as a double-glazing saleswoman.
Another key point is that Hetherington did not know Caddick, whose construction empire was successful but not on the scale it is today.
“I’d actually had approaches to buy Sheffield Eagles from Sheffield United and from a guy called Paul Thompson,” remembers Hetherington, munching on a cheese and tomato sandwich in a corporate box in Headingley’s plush North Stand, where you can watch the Rhinos from one side of the stand and Yorkshire County Cricket Club from the other.
“After 11 years of struggle and strife, I actually had people wanting to buy Sheffield Eagles.
“In terms of Leeds, I looked at all the information and we had a meeting.
“I said ‘I don’t have the wealth to solve your problem – a £5million debt’.
“And they were looking at losing another £500,000, so they couldn’t fund any further losses.
“I said I was prepared to take over the rugby operation and the rugby income streams.
“I said they could retain the stadium, the catering rights and advertising rights, so I would take the rugby team as a franchise and pay them rent to play here.
“They said that was of interest and asked me how much I would pay for it – and I said one pound. I said ‘fellas, it’s not even worth that because of your liabilities’.
“I got a call from Alf Davies at Leeds and he said ‘there is somebody else also interested, and you know him’. I said ‘who is it?’ and he wouldn’t tell me to begin with.
“But eventually Alf told me it was Paul Caddick and I said of course I would meet him.
“What I didn’t know is that Paul had helped the merged Headingley and Roundhay rugby union clubs, who became Leeds Tykes, to arrange a five-year deal to play at Headingley in 1995.
“The possible demise of Leeds RL would have left the club with nowhere to play.”
There was also the added turmoil of the rugby league club’s fractious relationship with Yorkshire County Cricket Club, who had been tipped to leave Headingley for a new site in Durkar, Wakefield.
Hetherington continued: “Had Yorkshire County Cricket Club moved out and the rugby league club gone bust, there would have been nowhere to play.
“In terms of the takeover, I was saying that I believed I had the knowledge, skills and experience to run the rugby operation given what I’d done at Sheffield Eagles, but I didn’t have the wealth.
“Paul was saying that he did have the wealth to manage and sustain but as a builder the last thing he wanted to be doing was running a sports operation.
“We were saying the opposite, but in many ways it was complimentary.
“I said to Paul ‘there is no question we can make it work, but we’re going to need a million quid to keep it going for the next three years’.
“He said ‘can you make rugby union work?’ and I said I didn’t know because it wasn’t my game.
“The logic there was that rugby league had moved to summer alongside cricket and rugby union was a winter sport which had turned professional, so it could fill the gap in terms of a winter business.
“I said ‘we’ll make a go of it’ and Paul said his business would fund the rugby union business, which it did for the first nine years.
“We made a fair bit of progress with Leeds Tykes by eventually reaching the Premiership and winning the Powergen Challenge Cup after beating Bath at Twickenham in 2005 while also reaching the Heineken Cup.
“But it was never sustainable as a stand-alone business because of the lack of supporter base and because we also got half the funding of the other Premiership clubs.
“That’s how Paul and I came to acquire the ownership of Leeds Rugby League Club and Headingley, which included Yorkshire County Cricket Club paying rent of £25,000 a year at the time.
“The relationship between Leeds and Yorkshire was dreadful at the time. We then said ‘spiritually, you should own the cricket ground and we should make the site work for both of us’.
“Yorkshire CCC constitutionally voted to leave Headingley but in the contract they were obliged to promote Test cricket here infinitum.
“That forced them come back and say ‘forget about Durkar, let’s make a go of it here at Headingley’.
“I don’t believe Yorkshire would have ever left Headingley because I don’t think Durkar would have ever been built.
“We always said ‘you either need to take ownership of the ground or pay a fair rent’.
“We inherited a really strained relationship. It’s been quite fascinating to see how different sports work – rugby league and rugby union and cricket to a lesser extent.”
Anyhow, Leeds RL were saved and Hetherington and Caddick soon stopped the rot on and off the field.
Hetherington said he had four key objectives when the takeover was completed.
“Number one, was to ultimately give the city a team to be proud of,” he explains.
“Leeds had not been proud of their team for quite some time.
“Leeds is a team who have to be successful but must also have players who are respected and seen as role models even if you’re not a rugby league fan.
“Number two was about trying to restore Headingley to its former eminence as an international sports arena because it was falling down in 1996. There has been over £100million spent on the site since then.
“Number three was about building a sustainable business and this is where my experience at Sheffield Eagles came in useful.
“We were absolutely focused on making profit, not for shareholders but to reinvest in the facilities and infrastructure.
“The fourth goal was to be a big part of the community and a big brand within the city.
“When we first arrived, the stadium was only ever open on matchdays, so we completely reversed that.
“At the same time, all the players and coaches got engaged in going out in the community and coaching, which led to the creation of the Leeds Rhinos Foundation.”
The rebrand from Leeds RL to Leeds Rhinos in 1997 allowed the Loiners to catch up with the revitalised Bradford Bulls, then the standard bearers, and St Helens, albeit gradually.
“It has been quite some journey but I played here in the 1970s and I could see the potential of the place,” says Hetherington, who played for a handful of clubs but rarely settled anywhere as he often fell out with the board.
“In 1998, we made the Grand Final before winning the Challenge Cup the following year, so we turned things round pretty quickly.
“After that, we started developing and introducing younger players into the squad, who became so fundamental to our success, of course.”
The likes of Rob Burrow, Kevin Sinfield, Danny McGuire and Jamie Jones-Buchanan proved outstanding mainstays of the team for well over a decade as Leeds became Super League’s dominant force.
Hetherington lists the 1999 Challenge Cup final win against London Broncos, the 2004 Grand Final success against Bradford and the 2005 World Club Challenge victory over Sonny Bill Williams’ Canterbury Bulldogs at Elland Road as among his early highlights.
Other fond memories include the 50th anniversary of the club’s 1961 championship win, which brought legends such as Ken Thornett, Wilf Rosenburg, Lewis Jones, Barry Sims and Jack Fairbank back to Headingley.
The treble-winning season in 2015, the Grand Final win over Castleford Tigers two years later and the “incredibly emotional” benefit game for Burrow in January 2020 rank highly too.
Even at 67, Hetherington has no plans to retire and he is one of only three shareholders in the club along with Caddick and long-serving commercial director Rob Oates.
“Paul and I are from very similar backgrounds in Castleford,” reasons Hetherington.
“He’s completely self-made and in many ways have very similar philosophies. He’s not somebody who is interested in acquiring wealth, even though he has plenty.
“Paul is very pragmatic about things and is not for throwing things at a lost cause.
“I think he saw what I did at Sheffield Eagles, and that was on a shoestring, and liked it so we were quite closely aligned.
“He’s become a lot more successful in the past 25 years, but he’s a fairly private man and not one for the limelight. In many ways, it’s been a perfect partnership.
“Right at the outset, we basically said ‘I’m not Paul’s boss, he’s not my boss’. We were there as partners and knew what each other could do.
“I would never offer him advice on how to build something and he wouldn’t tell me about how to run a rugby operation.
“Paul has got a genuine interest in the growth of the game and we’re aligned in that. We believe Leeds doing well can help contribute to the wider growth of the game.”
Hetherington is a rugby league man to the core and the job might be all-consuming but he says it is more of a hobby.
He says: “I still have my drive and I’ve never not had it. For me it’s not a job, it’s a lifestyle.
“In terms of succession planning, and we’re not going to be here forever, but there are no plans.
“With some businesses, you build them up with a plan to sell it, but that’s not the case here.”
Hetherington says he has never been attracted to working for the Rugby Football League, although he has turned down offers to work in the NRL.
“I’ve never had any desire to work in any other sport either because rugby league is my game,” he says.
“Whilst I have given a fair bit to the sport, it has given me a lot more.
“Australia has been an attraction and I’ve had offers from NRL clubs, but the two clubs I’ve worked at I’ve also owned – Sheffield and Leeds – so going down under would have been difficult.
“All my life, I’ve been master of my own destiny, but I’ve been to Australia 39 times and the game is so big over there.
“Kath and I love going there, especially Sydney, and this is the first year I’ve not been for a long time. Normally, I go every year; sometimes twice a year.
“I’ve not retirement plans. I’ll be here until I get found out! Naturally I’m a succession planner and that applies to the team and coaching staff.
“Not that it’s set in stone because things change.
“The strength of our organisation is the management team and staff. My main strength is my ability to delegate.”
Hetherington admits Super League as a competition has not advanced significantly since its inception in 1996 and he believes the Leeds Rhinos brand would be far bigger if the game as a whole had a higher profile.
There is the hope that the restructure of the game – a realignment between Super League and the RFL – will lead to some kind of progress being made.
“Our brand value would be worth more if the game itself was bigger.
“We created Super League 25 years ago and if we’d had a plan then, given where we are now, we’d be disappointed.
“The reality is that we never had a strategic plan so while a lot of good things have happened, certainly stadia development, we’ve never had a plan.
“This is something now we have a chance to put in place.
“At Leeds, we are committed to developing and spreading the Leeds Rhinos brand quite extensively.
“That’s why we taken on netball and our women’s rugby league team. Our sport is basically governed by clubs themselves.
“There is a common purpose now to do something collectively because our sport could be in jeopardy if we don’t do something about it.
“Constitutionally, all the Super League clubs voted to create this change and whole series of recommendations to move the game forward.
“It’s a big piece of work which is going ahead now.
“Performance-wise, our game has never punched anywhere near its weight in commercial or marketing terms.
“We need to create a commercial entity which can really maximise the game’s worth.”
Hetherington cites Ali Lauiti’iti as his best-ever overseas signing and Jamie Peacock as his finest domestic capture.
He was surprised and disappointed when Sinfield quit as director of rugby to join Leicester Tigers earlier this year, but confirmed head coach Richard Agar will move into that role at some point.
Hetherington explained: “Going forward, Rich will step into that role and run the rugby operation so we will bring in another coach, but there is no timescale on it.
“Kevin had become disillusioned with the role and his real interest is in performance.
“He will still have a connection with the club and his lad Jack is a player here and has a chance.”
The transition from their golden generation era has been difficult but Agar guided the Rhinos to Challenge Cup glory last year and in the season just ended they reached the play-off semi-finals.
Next year will be a time for serious progress, with big-name signings Aidan Sezer, Blake Austin, James Bentley and David Fusitu’a arriving to bolster a squad awash with homegrown talent.
Hetherington adds: “We won the competition in 2017 but redeveloping the stadium, coupled with Covid, has had an effect.
“There has been big change in our playing group and coaching staff.
“But now we’ve got real stability with the coaching team and the best squad we’ve had for a long time.
“There is a really good balance between youth and experience and quality, plus real strength in depth.
“I think we’ve got all the ingredients to be a really competitive force next year.”
