The Super League is coming to Wollongong, the beachside city-suburb in the Illawarra shire an hour south of Sydney and a world away from the M62 corridor in northern England. At the finely-named WIN Stadium, Wigan Warriors and Hull FC will bash heads in the heat in a live-ammunition round two fixture this weekend. And you may ask yourself: why are they doing that? And then you might ask others and have a think about it. And you might find that the list of reasons is actually quite long.

Consider Wollongong. It is all hot chips and seagulls, mining and steel. It is pre-fabricated bungalows and “sports clubs” which hold more poker machines than Las Vegas casinos. And it is rugby league land. And though their Illawarra Steelers were subsumed by the dominant Siamese twin of their merger with Dragons of St George, Wollongong remains a league hotbed. The deputy mayor, John Dorahy, played for Australia. He coached Wigan to the league championship and Challenge Cup double in 1994. Then they won the World Club Challenge, beating the Broncos in Brisbane, another world away.

In this one it’ll be slightly surreal to see a Super League match in Wollongong. But it makes a lick of sense. The clubs want put on a show, they want grow their brands and attract new supporters. They want to play rugby league in rugby league country, at the source. They want to expand, grow, and bust out into new hemispheres.

Canada’s Toronto Wolfpack has been an inspiration. As have Catalan Dragons. Toulouse Olympique is bidding to enter Super League. There’s talk of Boston and New York, even Perth entering teams. Wigan chairman Ian Lenagan expects Super League to become an international competition within five years.



There seems an element of Richard Branson about Lenagan. He wants to “create history” because he can. And why not? Why not be bold, expansionist, and other things rugby league isn’t really been known for? Visionary? Time will tell. But certainly to “just do it”, to “have a go”, and to bring a footy club to another market to show it off, it’s not very rugby league, at least not in Australia where Melbourne Storm and Newcastle Knights just played a trial and wouldn’t let anyone watch.

It’s also smart. The three-match tour is part of a tourism and destination partnership with the NSW government. Destination NSW and Destination Wollongong effectively bank-rolled the clubs’ attendance to entice an estimated 5,000 fans to come from the UK and interstate. That’s a lot of beds and beers and doner kebabs. It’s win-win at WIN.



According to the club it’s the “biggest single commercial initiative in the history of the club”. It’s why “Sydney.com” will appear on Wigan’s jumpers for all of 2018. It’s why live pictures of WIN Stadium on the beach will be beamed onto the big screen at Wigan’s DW Stadium where at kick-off at 8:45am GMT it will be approximately zero degrees.

Wigan looked at coming to Australia to play then-premiers Cronulla Sharks in the World Club Challenge in early 2017 but according to the club “time frames prevented it”. The lack of a local government prepared to fly everyone around and put them up may have scotched it, too.



But the Wigan board and a chairman open to ideas made a decision to make something happen. If need be they’d have come out on a standalone tour. They chose Hull to join them. They want to grow their brand. They want to grow partnerships. They want to have a go. And they’re willing to sell the space on their jumper to make it happen.



Will grommets from the Gong flock into sports stores to pick up Wigan Warriors and/or Hull FC jumpers? Will they want “Tomkins” on the back of a red-and-white shirt? Can two rugby league clubs from a competition in England attract fans in an already saturated Australian sports market? It will want to be a heck of a game, you would suggest.

Organisers have done one smart thing: the game means something. And not just premiership points. There’s a shield carved by an Indigenous local man in honour of Peter Sterling and Brett Kenny, the Parramatta Eels champions who played for both clubs in the Challenge Cup final of 1985.

Meanwhile the players have been all over the Illawarra, visiting schools, attending functions, kissing babies. As one local says, “They’ve made a lot of friends in Wollongong.” Next week they’ll be all over Sydney prior to the exhibition matches with the Dragons and Rabbitohs. They’re ambassadors for their clubs, their competition, their code.

The crowd? They’ll get 10,000. Perhaps 15,000 if the locals get suitably into it. There are those 5,000 fans from the UK and interstate. There are tens of thousands of Brits who call Sydney home. Ticket sales are healthy while the number of walk-up starters will depend on the weather, which should be typical for February: really quite hot.

But played in the evening with a nor-easter off the ocean – WIN Stadium is perched on the beach between a golf course and a brewery – conditions will be perfect for a cold beer and hot rugby league. And you may ask yourself: why don’t I watch that game? And you may ask yourself: why not, indeed.