Hull KR

Hull KR coach teases ‘local’ legend to address players and confirms lessons learnt from 2023 Challenge Cup

by
Sam Cook
June 4, 2025

Hull KR head coach Willie Peters has confirmed the club have “learned a lot” from their 2023 Challenge Cup Final ahead of Saturday’s edition.

As such, they’re set to make a number of minor changes in their preparation to give them the best chance to end the club’s 40-year trophy drought.

The Robins have made it to eight Challenge Cup Finals and won just one with that sole win coming in 1985 against their nearest and dearest rivals Hull FC, but now feels like the time that KR can finally claim silverware.

Playing in their third major final in three years, the Robins aren’t leaving anything to chance and hoping it’s third time lucky with Willie Peters confirming they’ve learned from previous defeats.

He explained: “We like to think that we’ve learned a lot from last year and we’re going to learn a lot from the year before and that we’ve brought in a couple of key players that can help us get to that next level.”

Robins set to bring in ‘local’ legend to address players

It’s fair to say that performances have certainly gone to the next level with Hull KR being the standout team so far in 2025, losing only once so far, and as a result their prep won’t be changing.

“It’s normal in terms of prep, video, field, all that sort of stuff,” Peters confirmed when speaking at the Challenge Cup Final media event, something he noted as ‘obviously different’.

“We’re travelling down a couple of days earlier. We’ve got a bit of a send-off to thank our fans and they’re going to wish us well. But then it’s business going down, the aim is to do a job, so that’s what we’re looking to do.”

He also confirmed that the club will likely bring someone in to speak to the players to highlight the magnitude of the game with teams often bringing in club legends or even legends of other sports.

Wigan Warriors brought in Sir Alex Ferguson in ahead of their Grand Final against Hull KR last year but the Robins will be opting for some ‘more local’ according to peters.

“I won’t finalise it yet, but we’ll probably look to,” he confirmed when asked on plans to host a speaker, adding: “We haven’t looked to get anyone in previously, but there’s someone that I’ve got in mind to bring in who is more local and who has been there and done it.”

What Hull KR will change in Challenge Cup prep after 2023

That won’t be the only change from 2023 with Peters explaining a number of minor changes the club will make, all in a bid to control the controllables and make things as smooth as possible.

On that 17-16 loss to Leigh, Peters explained: “We got beat in moments in the game, but one thing (we will change), in terms of the hotel, the hotel we stayed at was the best I’ve ever stayed at but it was a bit of a distance away.

“When we’re talking around hotels, an example would be that we said, ‘Oh, we may have to give ourselves time to do this, or we may have to give it’, no. We don’t want to may have to give ourselves time, we want to get there at the time that we normally get to a game and take any of that away, because you could be stuck in London traffic.”

He conceded: “Last time we probably got there a little bit early. We’ve got a certain time that we want to roll up to the ground and start our prep and that’s what we’re aiming to do this time, which we can do that by staying at a hotel nearby.

“We were on a bus last time for about six hours on the way down. Again, can’t predict the traffic so we’re going to look to get different type of transport down there. Then we’ll get on a bus to go to the local hotel. It’s just making sure that we can control what we can, because there are things that you can’t control.”

Peters joked the club planned to take a helicopter to London before confirming that they’ll actually travel by train before then taking a shorter bus journey to their chosen hotel.