BY JOHN DAVIDSON
Adam Hills believes Channel 4’s Super League coverage will be bigger and better this year, as the broadcaster enters its second year of covering the rugby league competition.
Channel 4 starts the new season by televising the World Club Challenge and then Hull KR vs Wigan this Saturday.
Australian comedian Hills leads the coverage with support from ex-players Kyle Amor, Danika Prim, presenter Helen Skelton and caller Mark Wilson.
“Now the whole team have talked about it, we’re all just really excited to get stuck into it because we feel like it was kind of like having sex, we didn’t know what we were doing but we had a lot of fun,” he told rugbyleaguehub.com Long Reads.
“But this time we’re going to be better at it.”
A lifelong rugby league and NRL fan, and South Sydney tragic, Hills says he now feels less like an “interloper” in Super League after a year presenting the sport in the UK.
“The viewer feedback last year was amazing. I was really worried that I was going to be a bit of an interloper.
“But I think in the last 12 months having covered Super League, having played more myself, having played for Australia in the PDRL World Cup, and then a big turning point was Shaun Wane rang me halfway last year and said if you ever wanted to come down to England training session, just let me know.
“And the week before the Samoa semi-final he messaged me and said do you want to come into the hotel on the Friday night.
“Just being there, talking to Shaun, seeing the way they do things, meeting the players, realising what our coverage means to them, it made me feel a bit more secure in what I was doing.
“I wouldn’t say imposter syndrome, I’d say interloper syndrome.”
Hills, who plays for Warrington’s PDRL team, feels more TV exposure will help Super League grow and become more popular across the entire UK.
“Just more eyes on it,” he said.
“It’s like the Paralympics, the more people that see it the more people become converted and I think the same’s going to happen to rugby league.
“That statistic that 2.9 million only saw rugby league on Channel 4 last year is a great thing.
“So I think it will be a tipping point – you will just show it off and show it off and show it off and then gradually people will kind of go, actually this is awesome. So, eyes.”
