BY JOHN DAVIDSON
London owner Grant Wechsel has set the target of the Broncos winning the Championship next year, after missing out on joining Super League, and revealed the club is after nine new overseas players.
London were ranked 16th by the IMG grading criteria but missed out on a spot in Super League, with Toulouse and York preferred.
Weschel, who has taken over the club along with Kangaroos legend Darren Locker, told rugbyleaguehub.com Long Reads that it was disappointing the Broncos didn’t get the nod to join the top flight.
“We put a lot of effort into our bid,” he said.
“We’ve got no doubts we would have put it together. We were prepared to go full throttle if we got the opportunity. It’s definitely a blow, but we’ve already regrouped. We’re determined to make our mark and make London successful.”
Weschel said London are in the process of appointing a new CEO and preparing a new squad.
The club have already announced the signings of NRL players Reagan Campbell-Gillar and Siliva Havili.
Weschel revealed the Broncos want to sign six more Australian or Kiwi players, with Jason Demetriou to also bring a few Papua New Guinea internationals with him when he arrives at the club. Head coach Demetriou will land in London after his duties with the Kumuls finish next month.
Asked for his thoughts on the IMG grading system, Weschel said: “It’s an interesting one. I think the grading system is a good thing in terms of putting some structure around performance and holding clubs accountable, but the whole idea of these two expansion clubs was that if you’re in the top 12, straight up, you’re either in with IMG grading points or not.
“And our view of the 13th and 14th spots was that it was going to be a combination of grading and then your bid submission on what you can do with your club.
“But also what you can do for the game, and that’s where you point to some of the other expansion strategies like the NRL, London is the biggest financial capital in the world, it’s the capital of the UK, it’s a huge market for expansion for then game, for TV ratings, for pathways, for all the things that we put forward in our bid.
“That’s probably where we were confident that that would make a difference, as certainly the grading of the club, since based on its prior ownership, it hadn’t done well and everyone could see that.
“We could admit the club is where it is in terms of what it’s done in the past, our whole focus is what we can do in the future and what we can do for the game outside of our club too.
“In that respect we think that it’s a missed opportunity for us, and probably a missed opportunity for the game.
“But we’re just determined to make sure we can prove that by winning the Championship, by increasing our grading score to one that’s going to get us promoted based on the grading system.”