It’s not easy to follow rugby league if you chose not to spend your money on satellite TV and live nowhere near a professional club. Within 24 hours of the Hull derby ending in Newcastle, I’d travelled over 500 miles south west to spend my annual week at an idyllic cottage in South Hams, on the Devon coast. There is no Sky, mobile signal or internet access there, which is part of its charm. But it makes being a rugby league fan rather tough. We were on the beach on Tuesday lunchtime when BBC2 aired The Super League Show down south, and had to leave The Cove bistro in magical Outer Hope (who boast Andy Farrell among their annual visitors) before their advertised broadcast of Cas v Wigan began in the tiny bar.

Thankfully for those outside the reach of BBC local radio in the north, we now have more rugby league on national radio than ever before, with TalkSport2 joining BBC’s 5 Live Sports Extra in broadcasting Super League. Last Thursday, both stations were broadcasting from the Hose/Jungle to the nation and will do so again this week from Wakey v Hull KR! TalkSport have committed to air 50 games across this season and next, mostly on new digital station TalkSport2, some on their main station.

“5 Live are not thrilled about us getting involved in rugby league,” admits TalkSport2 station manager Mike Bovill, a Wasps fan whose early exposure to league was attending Great Britain tests at Wembley. “But when they’ve got Test Match Special on Sports Extra, and the Euros start, and Wimbledon, we can keep broadcasting Super League. We’re committed to rugby league every Thursday, even when the Europa League is on, plus some big games on other nights. Rugby league was the first rights deal we did and it’s been a pleasure dealing with the RFL. It was great speaking with people who knew who we were and wanted to work with us straightaway.”

TalkSport’s voices will be familiar to many listeners. Aside from station star and Hull FC fanatic Adrian Durham, who hosted the show on Magic Sunday (and spoke to me about his love of the game for an interview in the new Forty20 magazine), their coverage is headed up by Radio Yorkshire’s Mark Wilson – previously of BBC Radio Leeds and BBC York, and Wish FM’s Wigan correspondent – and his understudy Richard Shaw Wright, with pundits so far including Paul Sculthorpe, Andrew Henderson, Michael Shenton and Danny Kirmond. It was confusing switching stations from the BBC to TalkSport2 during half-time of one Thursday game as we moved from one Kevin Sinfield interview into another, with Iestyn Harris the pundit for the Beeb having been Wilson’s sidekick on TalkSport2 the week before.

“I suppose I badgered them into doing this!” admits Wilson, who called three games over the Magic weekend for TalkSport’s network. “TalkSport started to take a few updates on the Challenge Cup and then on Friday nights from Super League. When TalkSport2 came along I bent Mike’s ear and told him what a great sport it was and what great access they would get. TalkSport seem quite happy so far.”

Despite the vast majority of games being on Sky, TalkSport2’s Super League games come directly from the press box, unlike several of their other sports commentaries, which emit from their smart new studio booths near London’s South Bank. “Hopefully the excitement in the ground comes across on air,” says Wilson. “Contrary to popular opinion, if you’ve not got Sky you won’t see or hear a lot of rugby league, so it’s certainly raised the profile of the game.”

TalkSport2’s Thursday shows start an hour before kick-off, giving an unprecedented amount of build-up and previews of the weekend’s games, with clips from midweek press conferences. And when it finishes at 10pm, you can switch over to Sports Extra for another half-hour’s discussion. We’ve never had it so good.

On the long drive home up the M5 on Monday evening, I was able to listen to Wilson’s hour-long Super League Review on TalkSport2, which is repeated for milkmen at 5am on Tuesdays, with Garry Schofield splashing his vehement views over all of the weekend’s top flight games. Along with regular plugs and occasional guest appearances on the main station, TalkSport2 are providing valuable oxygen for our game when football takes up the vast majority of airspace.

“There was a realisation that TalkSport was driven by Premier League football,” admitted Bovill. “But there is a huge audience out there who are into other sports who are not been catered for. So we’ve been able to bring live coverage of not just rugby league but tennis, rugby union, and T20 cricket. We’re not competing with TalkSport – TalkSport2 is not about the personalities, it’s about the sport.”

This is certainly true. With intelligent and wide-ranging magazine shows on cricket, American sports, European football and more, TalkSport2 may well appeal to listeners put off by TalkSport’s macho world of extreme opinion, one-eyed callers and dramatic rants, all interspersed with annoying ads for hardware stores. We should not dismiss this increased coverage as merely being on niche digital radio. It’s there, on a national stage.

So as the clock passed 10pm last Thursday, I was sitting in the car outside the cottage, with just bleating sheep, the metronomic flash from Start Point lighthouse darting across the star-studded black sky, and the dulcet tones of Sports Extra’s Dave Woods from faraway Wheldon Road for company. The romance of radio lives on.

They may have started their Eastern RL campaign with a two-point loss and a two-point win, but the most eye-catching element to St Albans this summer is their purple, lime green and white hooped kit. Sound familiar Bradford fans? Rather than wear their usual blue and yellow – St Albans’ colours – the Centurions are marking their 20th anniversary by donning a version of their original kit, which was donated to founders Gary Tetlow and Ken Edwards in 1996 by Bradford Bulls, having been worn by the Super League giants away from Odsal the previous season. For an amateur club to survive in a small, southern, football-dominated city (which also has three rugby union clubs) for 20 years is some achievement.

Foreign quota

Imagine Queensland picking a team to face New South Wales in front of a massive crowd in Sydney – Origin has started – who have never played rugby league before. That’s what happened 63 years ago this week when a bunch of American athletes faced that gargantuan challenge. The American All Stars took on NSW on 2 June 1953 at the SCG, just three days after losing 52-25 to star-studded Sydney in front of an astonishing crowd of 65,453, who hung off every precipice at the same venue.

With 10 Kangaroos in their side, NSW unsurprisingly romped past the 60 mark, but the Americans – none of whom even knew what league was when they landed two weeks earlier – managed to score 41 points of their own. That was mainly due to generous defending by the hosts, some coaching from South Sydney, Gary Kerkorian kicking every one of his goal attempts, and Al E Kirkland’s hat-trick. Former Pittsburgh Steeler Kerkorian returned to the NFL to win the Championship with Baltimore Colts while star centre Kirkland went on to play for Parramatta and Leeds. You can read the whole remarkable story in No Helmets Required, with a special offer for blog readers here.

Goal-line drop-out

Not only was there no broadband, no mobile reception and no Sky, scanning the national papers for league news in rural Devon was often fruitless. The first edition of Saturday’s Guardian, for instance, headed down there well before Friday night’s games finished. Thankfully, I opened my new copy of nostalgia-fest Rugby League Journal to, as if by magic, find a major feature on Devonian exports to our game.

I knew Plymouth had a professional team in Northern Union days but learned that they were joined by Torquay, Paignton and Teignmouth during a tumultuous 1913 for Devon rugby. Soon after, there was an exodus of the best talent to the north. Plymouth Devonport provided Barrow with Jim Peters, the first black man to play rugby for his country – in both codes! And the tale of Bob Fleet leaving Torquay to sign for Swinton in 1960 was very entertaining: it involved Lions directors dressing as wedding guests to infiltrate the Devon RU team hotel!

Fifth and last

Five months before most contracts expire, players are understandably seeking to confirm their employers for next season. Some of the best Championship talent should be in the top flight by then: assuming their new clubs stay up. Among those who will be leaving Bradford after two seasons of second division rugby are Danny Addy, who is not alone in heading for Hull KR, and Scotland team-mate Dale Ferguson, who is apparently returning to Huddersfield. Batley talisman Keegan Hirst looks set to fulfil his ambition of playing in Super League by signing for Wakefield Trinity (by the way No Helmets feels vindicated in never referring to them by the naff and now doomed Wildcats suffix) where he should be able to develop his off-field profile while potentially matching the feats of other former Championship stars Alex Walmsley and Chris Hill.

Follow No Helmets Required on Twitter and Facebook