timeSo far, it’s not entirely clear why Coldplay are coming to Craven Park. Last month one of the world’s biggest and most brazenly commercial bands announced they would take up residence at the 20,000-capacity Sewell Group Craven Park stadium (home of Hull Kingston Wanderers) next summer. Two nights to complement their residency in London, which caused a certain amount of confusion. These plus six nights at Wembley are Coldplay’s only dates in Europe next summer. Even the city council described the news as “absolutely crazy”.
Why Hull? On the one hand, the city itself has a rich musical heritage, from the Housemartins to Everything But The Girl to Mick Ronson. Neil Hagel told The Times in a recent interview that Coldplay wanted to play somewhere “Northern, gritty”: authentic, remote and a little weird. Hagel is the owner of the Rangers and the man responsible for landing what we now call the second-hottest ticket in town.
Because right now, there are more pressing things to deal with. A convoy of coaches will set off from Craven Park at noon on Saturday to begin the long journey to Old Trafford, a 100-mile journey that will also feel like crossing a historical border. After four years at the bottom of the Super League and almost 40 years after their last major trophy, Hull KR reached the Grand Final for the first time. The argument here is that none of this matters to anyone outside East Hull, which is why – paradoxically – it matters to everyone.
Hull KR’s rise in just a few years has been a triumph for many authors: players such as Mikey Lewis and Elliot Minchella, workaholic Australian coach Willie Peters Willie Peters, an army of staff and unpaid volunteers, chairman and former caddy Hudgell, who has weathered relegations, promotions and a pandemic before pouring millions of his own money into a business long thought to be in A club in the midst of something of a controlled decline, a place with a rich past but a bleak future.
Maybe you didn’t hear much about it when it happened. After all, rugby union isn’t a big player in the country’s sporting landscape and, historically speaking, Rangers aren’t even Hull’s biggest club. But in a city where the club still has an overwhelming fan base – 60 per cent of fans live within walking distance of the stadium – the feeling of growth has been evident for some time.
Average attendances have hovered between 7,000 and 8,000 for much of this century, but have soared to more than 10,000 this season. Season ticket sales hit an all-time high. This was local, organic, word-of-mouth growth: a revolution from the ground up, starting in the streets and neglected housing estates that make up some of the region’s most deprived areas. Hagel himself grew up on these streets and failed his A-levels before training as a lawyer. Although he was repeatedly urged to sell his house, he understood the importance of sports in providing a sense of belonging, a pillar of community in unstable, divided times.
In a few weeks, IMG will publish the first set of official club ratings on which next season’s Super League and Champions League status will be based. Despite finishing fourth and reaching the Challenge Cup final last season, Hull KR barely qualified for the automatic top flight in last year’s provisional review. Only 25% of the ratings are tied to performance, with the rest defined by metrics such as profits, TV ratings, YouTube engagement and whether the stadium has LED TV advertising boards.
Meanwhile, community work is only weighted at 5% and is based solely on the club’s foundation’s annual turnover, with little judgment or scrutiny of the beneficiaries of the money. If you spent £1m on a big bowl of Haribo to sit next to the M62, you’d get a perfect 1.0. At the same time, if your company lounge does not meet the minimum capacity of 200 people, or if the director’s box is not sufficiently perpendicular to the center line, you will receive a 1.0 deduction. This gives you a pretty good idea of IMG’s priorities.
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The scalability is very good. Investment is good. Spreading the gospel is good. But for a sport that is synonymous with its community, it is by far more important that it stays true to itself and serves the place it represents, which is its oldest and most reliable investors. The most sacred function of any sports club is to nurture those roots, providing a sense of belonging and value that can never truly be encapsulated in stock market filings or rating cards.
Rugby league is not a rich sport. It’s not filled with investment bank sponsors or petty royals or people willing to pay hundreds of dollars to watch their sport escalate into a gourmet experience. But it’s true. Saturday night’s Wigan v Hull City match is not a TV highlight reel, a social stop or a sporting shuffle, but a real event with real pedigree for real people.
I think the moral of the Hull KR story is that the local and the global, the ordinary and the extraordinary, are not necessarily opposites. The tedious work of building a base is not inconsistent with the pursuit of more bases. Their victory on Saturday will be one of the sports stories of the year. It will push them to a wider stage, detonate the logic of the sport itself, and maybe even light a way for future speculators and dreamers. Why Hull? So why not?
