London Broncos miss out on key recruit as Mike Eccles offers recruitment update

London Broncos head coach Mike Eccles has provided an update on recruitment suggesting that the club have missed out on numerous signings, potentially including an NRL hooker.

The Broncos shocked everyone in rugby league when they earned promotion, going on an incredible second half of the season run before a play-off gauntlet of three away victories secured their Super League status.

Since then they’ve lost plenty of their key players including the likes of Dean Whare and Corey Norman, whilst recruitment hasn’t been as easy as the club would have liked.

That’s something that head coach Mike Eccles has spoken about on the club’s Youtube channel, expressing that he and his team are waiting for the right people to sign as well as indicating some talent has slipped through their fingers for one reason or another.

Eccles said: “There will be more signings before the season starts. As always you can’t beg people to come to London, it doesn’t work. You’ve got to want to come for the right reasons and that’s really important to me. I’ve got to stay patient, more patient than I wanted but I’ve got to stay strong, stay patient and hopefully be in the right place for the club to maximise that potential.

“Since I’ve taken over, I’ve always tried to keep the nucleus of the squad together. So from year one to year two, I wanted to retain as many players as I could, and it worked well.

“That’s the same this year, we’ve lost a few players that we were always going to lose anyway, whether we were Championship, part-time or Super League, those players were always going to leave anyway.”

The Broncos have signed the likes of Rhys Kennedy who had been released by Hull KR, former Hull FC man Hakim Miloudi and ex-Warrington Wolves captain Jack Hughes.

One man who they had strongly been linked with was Manly Sea Eagles hooker Karl Lawton who was heavily linked with the club back at the start of December, The Mole of Wide World of Sports even suggesting the deal was done.

In Eccles’ interview he references deals that have collapsed, with the likelihood being that Lawton was one of these failed transfers.

Eccles explained: “The squad will evolve. We’re still heavily involved in talking to agents and trying to get players in. It feels a little bit like copy and paste from last year, to be honest. We’ve spoken to so many players.

“A few deals have fallen through and we’ve backed out a few deals because for one reason or another, it’s got to be right and we will have to build into the season again, albeit we can’t build into the season like we did last year in the Championship.