Hull KR head coach Willie Peters has fielded questions on the latest reports linking him with an NRL switch, as well as the Robins’ new partnership with North Queensland Cowboys.
The morning after their dominant win over Castleford Tigers, Hull KR confirmed that they had launched a partnership with NRL side North Queensland Cowboys and Peters has further explained elements of that, including player movement.
Peters noted that much of the deal will be guided by club CEO Paul Lakin, however, he explained he expects players from the Cowboys to come over to England as part of the deal.
The Australian also addressed recent reports that he was being eyed up for the Perth Bears job with Peters having caught the eye of those Down Under based on his impressive stint with Hull KR.
Turning the attention to Friday’s game against Wakefield and silencing those reports, he said: “My focus is, as I said, doing what I’m doing now and certainly Friday night and getting the team ready.
“Look, if you win games as a coach, things like that happen. If you lose games then you’re in the media for the wrong reasons of your job is probably coming to an end. So I don’t worry too much about that, I just focus on what I’m doing every day.”
How Hull KR and North Queensland Cowboys partnership will work
With any immediate talk of an NRL move for himself out of the way, he would explain what the club’s link with the Cowboys meant and his understanding of it.
Having already formed a relationship with Port Moresby Vipers in Papua New Guinea and broken ground in Amsterdam this year and Las Vegas next year, Hull KR are fast becoming one of the leaders in Super League at breaking boundaries.
One thing Peters was clear on, as Paul Lakin had been, was that it’s not a deal whereby you ‘shake hands and hear nothing from each other’. Instead, Peters has highlighted it is about developing in terms of brands, departments and even players.
He explained: “We want, as Paul said, to be able to share staff, whether it’s marketing departments, whether it’s staff from the rugby department going over there and staff coming over. It’s all about developing.
“You want to develop as a person and as a club, and we can learn from them. They can learn from us and players will come over here, I’d imagine.”
On the prospect of players heading to Craven Park, Peters underlined the fact that the NRL is the premier competition with Super League “not far behind”, so blooding players in England could be an aspect of the partnership.
Peters argued: “There’s no doubt the Super League is ahead of the Queensland Cup, so players who aren’t ready to play in NRL will come over here and play in the Super League and get opportunities.
“You’ve seen a lot of players making a name for themselves over here that have come from Queensland Cup or New South Wales Cup. That will happen, there’s no doubt about that.”
How that would work is unclear given that Hull KR will likely be full on their overseas quota, so it could be a case of players making the swap at lower levels such as the academy, or simply open up a new player pool for when the Robins do recruit.
The academy was something that Peters made note of though, labelling this partnership as “massive”, noting: “That’s an area that we want to grow. Cowboys have got such a massive catchment in terms of who they can choose from and they want to bring their own through.
“Similar to us, we want to bring our own through. It takes time to do that, but it’s developing and learning and getting an understanding of how others do things and that’s what we’ll do.
“Our players going over there, there’ll be definitely some things in and around that where we’ll take our academy over there at some stage and they’ll get an understanding of the game over there and lifestyle.”
CEO, Paul Lakin talks about sharing experiences with the Cowboys to build the partnership 🗣️
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