Hull Kingston Rovers, are hours away from playing in the 2024 Super League Grand Final, which quite frankly is an amazing achievement. I have been considering how they got there, and if there is a timeline it all converges on 12th August 2023. The same day that Leigh broke a 52 year hoodoo and lifted the Challenge Cup. On that day Leigh went into the final having already defeated Rovers both Home and Away. Although evenly matched, Leigh had the measure of KR and in the end the game needed to be decided by Golden Point. Since this point the gap between Hull KR and Leigh has become a chasm many games between the two teams (mostly played at Craven Park) have gone the way of the Robins.
Hull KR took that defeat as a sign and have been ruthless in the transfer market and are looking even stronger for the 2025 season regardless of what happens today. Rovers have become the road map for building a successful club, and in my opinion have achieved this by being more ruthless than teams like Leigh. Players have come onto the market that Leigh have been linked to or that I as a rabid fan would like to see Leopard print.
Wakefield were relegated at the end of the 2023 season and as per usual practice the remaining Super League team picked the carcass clean. Tanginoa and Whitbread are both players that were linked to Leigh but both turned up in East Hull and became integral in the 2024 team. Having lost a starting halfback, Leigh could have been interested in Tyrone May, who was instrumental in a successful season at Catalans, but true to form he appears at Craven Park. The strangest example was possibly the menage a trois with Oliver Gildart, signing for Hull KR and appearing on loan at the LSV.
The rollcall for 2025 is no different, Jared Waerea-Hargreaves might have been considered a good fit for a team losing Amone, O’Donnell and Asiata, but no KR snap up a marquee forward. Rhyse Martin turned down an extension at the Rhinos, Leigh offered what was reported to be a sizeable contract, before dropping out with interest from both Leeds and Warrington. Guess what? he signs for the Robins.
The question must be raised as to how certain teams are able to fit their talented squads into a Salary capped sport. Beaumont has stated that Leigh are salary capped and can only support around 21 squad players, with handful of reserves and both today’s Grand Final teams are bursting with talent. It is a shame the salary cap is not more transparent for the fans, so we can all see the creative accounting going on at Wigan and Hull KR.

It won't have anything to do with creative accounting. The live auditing of the cap will see to that.

The fact that we have no academy, and only had a reserve team established this year means we wont get as much value for our salary cap as other teams. There are dispensations on salary cap for club trained players, plus a lower cap value for club trained marquee players.

We've used around 30 players this year. And all of them have had to be recruited from other clubs. We're probably spending more money on players 21-30 than anyone else in SL, who will be bringing players through as fringe players. As a result we probably can't offer as much to players that we want to bring in to improve the 13 as KR were able to last year. Because they have their academy and reserves setup, they could focus on quality, not quantity like us.

All of the above shows how incredible a job that Chester and Lam have done this last three years.