BY JOHN DAVIDSON
Charles Dickens’ iconic 1859 novel A Tale of Two Cities is a story about resurrection, redemption and love, and the adventures of two men. This year’s Super League grand final leans heavily into that famous text through club owners Matt Ellis and Simon Moran.
Both love their teams very much. Both have invested millions in trying to achieve success. Both have done their best for their clubs to thrive and succeed, but both are very different individuals with varying personalities and profiles.
Ellis took over at Wakefield Trinity in 2023. The Barnsley-born son of kitchen millionaires, he was a football fan and Barnsley FC supporter who had come under the spell of Wakey and rugby league.
A larger-than-life character, Ellis finally bought the club three years ago at arguably its lowest ebb. Relegated from Super League, with a stadium rebuild under way and a very depressed fanbase yearning for better days.
The only way was up and the transformation at Belle Vue, both on and off the field, has been nothing short of remarkable. Promotion back to Super League was achieved at the end of 2024, attendances rose and credibility was maintained last year.
This year the club has taken more massive steps forward and is now into its first-ever grand final, with the chance for a first major trophy since 1968 and the era of the Fox family.
It is fairytale stuff. A resurrection for the ages.
At the heart of it all has been bearded businessman Ellis. Ambitious, driven, the stout Wakefield owner gives the image of the average, knockabout Yorkshire bloke, despite having an estimated net worth of around £160 million.
The one who likes a pint, likes a pie, likes a joke and has a big smile. The one who is a big fan at heart, who enjoys going on the field and celebrating with supporters at full-time, fist pumps and all.
Ellis is a regular figure in the media, on Sky Sports, TalkSport and other platforms. He is great for a quote, a favourite of journalists and has been a main supporter of Nigel Wood’s return to the RFL.
Two years ago, in an interview with The i Paper he talked about his big plans and ambitions for his new club.
“We wanted to show ambition to the supporters – that’s what they needed,” Ellis said at the time.
“If you’ve had 25 years of struggling, you’re going to lose a lot of supporters, or you’re going to have a lot of dormant supporters because it is hard coming every week and we’d got down to the real hardcore.”
“We have to make it the most exciting project in rugby league over the next three to five years.
“Leigh have probably been the most exciting project over the past two years and we could be… the teams there that are dominating, they’re used to it now. So, over the next five years we want to push to be in that reckoning.”
Ellis has delivered, and Wakefield are well ahead of schedule. Fourth in the league this year and then into the grand final after one of the greatest upsets of all-time in the semi-final against Wigan, Ellis and his club have been true to their word.
Contrast that with Simon Moran.
Moran is almost a mythic figure, a hermit who shuns the limelight and is rarely seen in public and never sighted in the media. A music mogul, the promoter behind Oasis, Coldplay, Take That, Robbie Williams and others, he has made his money not in kitchens but in artists.
With an estimated net worth of around £150 million, Moran has owned Warrington Wolves since 2003. It has been far from a rapid rise for the Wire.
Warrington flirted with the semi-finals and with coaches for several years until Tony Smith was appointed in 2009. After the Challenge Cup was won that season, the Wolves enjoyed a transformation that made them proper contenders, with League Leader’s Shields won in 2011 and 2016, Challenge Cups won in 2010, 2012 and 2019, and grand final appearances secured in 2012, 2013 and 2018.
But there have been ups and downs along the way, good seasons and bad, sackings and controversies, and that first grand final victory, that win at Old Trafford, that first premiership since 1955, has always just eluded them.
Always tantalisingly close, but heart-breakingly just out of grasp. It’s the one that matters most.
This Saturday Warrington get another crack at it. Another chance to end decades of hurt. Another opportunity to make ‘It’s always their year ‘ finally a historical footnote.
If the Wolves do get the job done, no one will probably celebrate more, or deserve it more, than Moran. While Ellis might have tipped £10 million to £12 million into Wakefield, Moran has spent upwards of £30 million or more over 23 years on his beloved club.
He has done everything possible – investing in the stadium, in the academy, in coaches, in star players, in future Immortals like Andrew Johns – to try and make Warrington successful. All the while remaining in the background, in the shadows, with little accolades, eager to be out of view.
Moran, a Sheffield University graduate in the mid 1980s, avoids publicity and interviews. But those who know the Warrington-born promote him talk about his humility.
“SJM Concerts is now absolutely massive but Simon is still the down to earth person we knew,” singer Peter Hooton told The Warrington Guardian in 2019.
Sources say Moran is kind, private but absolutely dedicated to his club and passionate about all things rugby league. He is a friend of Souths owner and Hollywood star Russell Crowe, and has stayed on his northern NSW farm. It was only through his involvement with Peter V’landys and support that the Ashes series took place in the UK last year.
A rare media appearance came in 2018 at the Halliwell Jones Stadium when the appointment of Robert Elstone as Super League CEO, and the split with the RFL, was announced.
But you’d be hard-pressed to spot him elsewhere, before or since, especially where cameras and phones are about. This reporter saw him entering the corporate area at Headingley last Friday, just before Warrington played Leeds. Dressed like any other member of the public, you would have never have known he was a key figure in the sport internationally and one of Britain’s top music promoters.
One individual told a story this week about Moran and how during the Covid pandemic, when matches were held behind closed doors and few people were allowed into stadiums to watch games. On one occasion, Moran went through the security checkpoint to be admitted to the Halliwell Jones Stadium. But the security guard, at his own stadium no less, didn’t even recognise the club owner and dutifully advised him on where he had to go, like he was just a run-of-the-mill individual.
Anonymity is what Moran likes and has largely maintained that since taking control of the Wolves two decades ago.
And so it comes to Saturday, when the dreams of one owner will come true. The other will be left with disappointment, rueing what might have been. I’d leave it to you, humble reader, to determine who might be Darnay and who is Carton.
But on October 3, for these two men, this much is clear: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”
