Sir Lindsay Hoyle believes England’s leading female rugby league players have an opportunity to surpass the achievements of the Lionesses with success in the Rugby League World Cup this autumn.
Hoyle, the speaker of the House of Commons, will be the Rugby Football League’s president in 2023 after accepting a one-year term to succeed the broadcaster Clare Balding. A lifelong rugby league fan who was chairman of the now defunct Chorley Borough in the 1990s, Hoyle has promised to use his significant platform in London to boost the game’s profile while in office.
However, he believes this year’s World Cup is a golden opportunity for England’s women to create a similar breakthrough moment to the Lionesses, who were crowned European champions on Sunday, and catapult themselves into the mainstream with success on home soil.
“Everyone is asking about the Lionesses and wanting to know about the backstory of the players, which is fantastic, and we can have that with our top women’s players in rugby league if the World Cup is executed right,” Hoyle said. “We’ve got an opportunity to go one better in many ways, they’ve become European champions but we can become world champions.
“The real impact of women’s football and the growth of it has been on show this past weekend but I believe we’ve got a better opportunity. The quality in women’s rugby league is absolutely incredible and our players can go and become world champions.
“We can take the sport to new heights for the men, the women and the wheelchair players with all three World Cups, but the sport has to take the opportunity with both hands.”
Hoyle says rugby league has “got to sell the game better” if it wants to be taken more seriously across the whole country, but has promised to try to attract new supporters outside of its traditional heartlands. “The growth of the game matters to me, it really does, and I will do all I can to help that over the next year,” he said.
“We need to make sure we have a team that can compete with Australia and New Zealand. I want to help build a massive platform for the future of our national game. We want people talking about our players as champions but we’ve got to sell the game better. We’ve got to get more bums on seats. We’ve got to get more people watching on television. We’ve got the best games, but let’s not keep it the best-kept secret any longer.”
Hoyle, who regularly attends games when back in his Chorley constituency, said he will continue his battle to get rugby league on the agenda in Westminster as much as possible. “We always have plenty of Culture, Media and Sport question sessions and I am always mentioning rugby league to people,” he said. “I’m always prompting MPs to talk about rugby league because it really is the greatest sport.
“We have ministers that know rugby league has to be on the agenda down here. But we’ve got a great selling point to get people talking about rugby league down here with the World Cup. We’ve got to plug people into the World Cup.
“My belief is if you watch five games of rugby league, you’ll be committed to it for life, because there is no better sport to watch. We have an amazing opportunity to change the sport.”
