Former Hull FC coaching target Lee Briers lining up huge job

Former Warrington half-back and Wigan and England coach Lee Briers looks set to make a surprise NRL move, despite Super League links.

After making his mark at St Helens, Briers spent 15 years at St Helens as well as representing Wales and Great Britain.

Since retiring from playing, he’s had high-profile coaching roles with Wigan Warriors and England, and is currently an attacking coach at NRL side Brisbane Broncos.

It had seemed that he was destined to make a move into a head coaching role sooner rather than later.

Last year, he told rugby-league.com: “I always had faith in my coaching ability and if it eventuates that I go on to become a head coach, it pays off. That’s eventually the target, either in Super League or the NRL.”

However, he reportedly rejected a move from Hull FC to make him their head coach, before they eventually secured his colleague John Cartwright for the role instead.

Now, he’s reportedly set to join Wayne Bennett at South Sydney Rabbitohs in an assistant coach role, according to The Australian Daily Telegraph.

Lee Briers staying away from Super League

The saga surrounding the head coach role at Souths went on for months, after the sacking of Jason Demetriou, with high-profile names such as Sam Burgess reportedly in the mix, but they eventually settled on legendary coach Wayne Bennett.

Now, it seems that they’ll be adding Lee Briers to the ranks from 2025, per The Telegraph.

They reported that Briers is “now keen to have a stint under Bennett and eventually become an NRL head coach”, suggesting that his spell at Souths under the master Wayne Bennett could actually be his final ‘apprenticeship’. That’s the approach that former St Helens boss Kristian Woolf took down under, serving as assistant to Bennett at the Dolphins before stepping into the role next year.

If these reports come to fruition and Briers does depart to join Souths then this may turn out to be a nightmare for Brisbane Broncos and their head coach Kevvie Walters, who following the loss of Cartwright, has now lost two assistant coaches in the space of two weeks, and will need to start the search for a replacement.

Now that Briers won’t be on his way to Hull FC, it’ll now surely be 2026 at the earliest that he gets his first taste of life as a head coach.