Latest news with #KrisRadlinski
The Sun
11-07-2025
- Sport
- The Sun
Rugby league's ‘King', Sir Billy Boston, gets more honours after knighthood
THE PRINCES on the pitch may steal the show with the action – but there is only one King Bill. Tonight is about one man – rugby league's first ever knight, Wigan legend Sir Billy Boston. 3 As the Warriors face Huddersfield, the icon gets more recognition. After 571 tries in 564 career appearances as he became a legend – with three statues around the country - he was knighted by King Charles last month. Now Wigan and the 13-a-side code gets to toast its own king as the 90-year-old's son Stephen is ready for an emotional night. He said: 'He will always be King Bill. He's still my hero. 'I remember Green Vigo used to come into dad's pub and he used to say, 'The King's retired and the Prince is taking over.' Dad replied, 'The King's still here, don't you worry about it.' 'All the teams used to come in, even the Aussie touring sides, just to see my dad and have a chat. 'I never saw him play physically but I've seen the reels and he was unstoppable in some of them. Every time he touched the ball, the crowd went up on its feet. 'Tonight promises to be special, we're all looking forward to it. Wigan as a club has been really good with him and you can also see his face light up when he sees chief executive Kris Radlinski.' Sir Billy's standing in rugby league and Wigan is exemplified in many ways. When he is walking around the supermarket with wife Joan, he is stopped by small children. Stephen says there is not much memorabilia left as his old man has given loads away and if he could, he would still be at clubs' presentation evenings. When he was shown on screen during the Warriors' Good Friday derby with St Helens, everyone – even away fans – saluted him. 'Seeing that on TV brought a tear to my eye,' added Stephen, who lives in Scotland and is travelling to his hometown today. 'You could see what it meant. I think somebody just elbowed him and said, 'They're talking about you and they're clapping you.' The big smile came on his face. 3 'That was priceless, you'll never see that again. All of a sudden, my phone was going, 'Ping, ping, ping, ping, ping, ping.' 'Everyone was asking, 'Did you see your dad? I replied, 'I'm watching it now.'' There is only one first knight, there is only one sportsman with three statues – in his native South Wales, in Wigan and at Wembley. There is only one Sir Billy Boston. However, Stephen admits a 'bittersweet' sentiment that it has taken his dad to reach 90 years of age, after living with vascular dementia for 13, to get a knighthood. To him, it should have come a decade ago as he told SunSport: 'The knighthood came a little bit too late for him to enjoy it fully. 'He enjoyed the day at the Palace but I asked him the day after, 'Did you enjoy that yesterday?' and he couldn't remember. 'It should have come about 10 years ago. He would have known everything that was happening. 3 'Two of my sisters – Lisa Parr and Angela Dainty - have passed away. They never got to see him getting this and they'd have been over the moon. 'He's still got wit and he's still quite funny. The king came over and said, 'I used to play rugby union in the army, but it's not as dangerous as your game.' 'Dad turned round and said to him, 'I think your job's a bit more dangerous than mine.' He had the whole room laughing. 'He also grabbed hold of my arm and said, 'That's the biggest honour I've ever had in my life.' 'To see him deteriorate is hard to watch when you've had a hero like that for so long - he's still my hero and he always will be. 'Even when he does finally leave this planet, the legacy he'll leave behind is second to none. 'He still knows everybody, though, and that's a big bonus for me – he still knows he's got statues too. He brings that up in conversations quite a lot. 'It is special, there's only one first one ever to do it. Obviously, dad will enjoy the night, but he'll forget about it tomorrow.'
BBC News
10-07-2025
- Sport
- BBC News
Wigan hooker Forber signs new four-year deal
Wigan Warriors hooker Tom Forber has signed a new four-year deal to remain with the Super League club until the end of the 2029 21-year-old has played in a total of 17 Super League and Challenge Cup games for the club and has scored two has made six appearances this term, with most of his experience coming last season when he deputised following an injury to Brad O'Neill."I'm really excited to have re-signed with the club, I feel like I've been lucky enough to play in some big games so far in my career including last year's Grand Final and I'm hungry to keep developing my game and improving to hopefully have the opportunity to play in a lot more over the next five years," he said."I can't thank [CEO] Kris Radlinski, [head coach] Matt Peet and the rest of the coaching team enough for giving me the opportunity and I'm looking forward to seeing what the future holds for us as a team"
Yahoo
05-03-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
'We were disruptors then and we're disruptors now'
THE staging of a Super League match in Las Vegas is another example of the kind of principles upon which rugby league was born. That is the view of Warrington Wolves chief executive Karl Fitzpatrick and his Wigan Warriors counterpart Kris Radlinski, who between them were the driving forces behind the competition's first ever game to be played on American soil. Of course, there had to be a winner and a loser and from a Warrington perspective, Fitzpatrick admits to being 'very disappointed' at how his club's enjoyment stopped when the action started as Wigan ran out convincing 48-24 victors at Allegiant Stadium. However, he says the desire to be different which saw the sport founded back in the 19th century was in full view throughout the week. 'It's been an absolutely incredible, phenomenal week,' he told Sky Sports after the game. 'Ourselves and Wigan were among the founding fathers back in 1895 – we were disruptors then and we're disruptors now in 2025. 'We've broken new ground and we've put our fantastic sport on a global platform. 'Obviously, we're very disappointed in terms of the performance as we wanted to reward our loyal fans who had travelled over, but overall it's been an incredible experience.' The NRL – the organisers of the second Rugby League Las Vegas event that was successfully launched last year – invited Wigan and Warrington to face off as part of an expanded weekend having been impressed by the number of English fans that travelled to watch the action in 2024. And with more than 10,000 supporters heading over from the UK this time around, it was confirmed post-match that a Super League fixture would once again grace Allegiant Stadium in 2026. After some difficult times for the sport in recent years, Radlinski was delighted they could give the English game a moment in the sun while he also paid tribute to the thousands of fans who travelled. 'There will be a lot of headlines about the scoreline, but I wanted this for Super League. We want what we deserve,' he said. 'We've had some difficult times – I think back to the CEO meetings during Covid when we were fighting to try and keep the sport alive. 'This is for all of our clubs, even the volunteer clubs on a Sunday morning. 'This is achievable in our sport and I'm so proud – I'm so proud of all the Northerners who have travelled to the other side of the world.'
BBC News
03-03-2025
- Sport
- BBC News
Has Las Vegas been a success for rugby league?
Las Vegas, a city built around its extravagance and opulence, with the blinking bright lights of giant electric billboards, garish neon signs, and enormous flashing video screens feels about as far away from the traditional northern England rugby league heartlands as its possible to get. Ultimately though, that's entirely the point of the sport's Sin City adventure. Taking a game that has always struggled for attention in the crowded sporting marketplace to a city, and indeed a country, with no history or heritage in the game may, for many, seem an unusual and expensive gamble. Still, if you're going to take a chance there's perhaps no more fitting place on earth than Las Vegas to roll that is, after all, a city well used to hosting major global sporting events like boxing, the Super Bowl and Formula One - and rugby league is now secured on that illustrious list. If there were any questions about the ambition and commitment to this festival of rugby league, they were answered on Thursday evening in downtown Vegas. The Australian National Rugby League (NRL), the driving force behind the project, turned the world-famous Freemont Street into a spectacular red carpet walkway filled with dancers, musicians, drummers and sporting celebrities all to welcome the players from the eight teams involved. More than 10,000 fans turned up to the event creating a carnival atmosphere, the like of which the sport has never seen before. Many watching on from the barriers were left open-mouthed at the scale of the welcome. And all that before a ball had even been League may not have been here at all had it not been for the vision of Wigan Warriors chief executive Kris Radlinski. Twelve months ago he reached out to the NRL to get his side involved, having watched last year's inaugural event that was limited to just Australian clubs."I never thought it'd be like this, it's bigger than I imagined," said Radlinski."But it's what we deserve. I want everyone at home to believe what's possible. We've been through so much as a sport, so much effort that goes on behind the scenes and we're in Las Vegas, it's exciting. We should enjoy and embrace it." At the iconic Allegiant Stadium, one of the world's most impressive sporting arenas and home to NFL side the Las Vegas Raiders, Radlinski's Wigan put on a show befitting their tag as World Club Champions, soundly beating Warrington Wolves in the event's opening match. England women's side suffered a record defeat in their historic international against Australia. There were victories too for Canberra Raiders and Penrith Panthers in the NRL for even the most loyal travelling fans and the broader game, this was about much more than results."This is what this is all about, the opportunity to put the game on a new global territory in front of new audiences whilst also giving the players and the fans new experiences," said Rhodri Jones, the managing director of RL Commerical and one of those charged with building the English rugby league brand. "I think we've grasped the opportunity with both hands, I don't think we could have done any more. "Hopefully people at home have seen this has been an unbelievable event and hopefully it will be even better next year. "The number of tickets sales is better than last year so that tells you that we have collectively made an impact."But where does the game go from here? A number of English clubs have already expressed an interest in playing in next year's event, which has now been confirmed as again featuring Super League sides. It is fairly easy to see why. Future options include building the World Club Challenge into the programme and expanding the number of whilst this has all undoubtedly been an exciting new departure for the fans already engaged in the sport, what impact this will all have on rugby league's future as a truly global sport remains unclear. What is for certain is that rugby league has entered a bold new era.
The Guardian
28-02-2025
- Sport
- The Guardian
Viva Las Vegas: will ‘biggest game in British rugby league' widen reach?
It started with a speculative email sent late at night almost a year ago but on Saturday evening, Kris Radlinski's vision for Super League will become a reality live and in living colour in the bright lights of Las Vegas. The Wigan Warriors CEO was at home, like so many others, watching the National Rugby League's (NRL) inaugural venture into the United States at Allegiant Stadium just outside Las Vegas. His immediate thought: how does British rugby league muscle in on the opportunity? And so went the email that could potentially change the landscape of Super League for years to come: or at least, that is the tentative hope, anyway. What was a two-game event last year has now doubled in size. On Saturday, two NRL fixtures – Canberra versus New Zealand Warriors and Penrith versus Canterbury – plus the first Super League game played in North America between Wigan and Warrington, as well as a women's Test, will be played in front of over 50,000 supporters – many of them existing rugby league fans, but some of them new. It is rare for Super League and the NRL to work hand-in-hand like this, but there is a shared goal of collectively cracking the US sports market and exposing rugby league to the masses worldwide. Super League has tried to widen its net before, taking league fixtures to Camp Nou, Wollongong and even pushing the North American narrative with Canadian franchise Toronto Wolfpack. All of that, ultimately, left little in the way of a legacy. So can Wigan versus Warrington in Las Vegas be different? Well, potentially: not least because the NRL's marketing budgets and aggressive media-drive automatically make this bigger than anything Super League has attempted on its own. 'I've said before, this is the biggest game in Super League history, but I think I was wrong,' the Warrington CEO, Karl Fitzpatrick, said. 'I think it's actually the biggest game in British rugby league history, going back to 1895.' It is a bold claim, and the cynics would argue we've been here before and seen a sojourn into new territory serve as nothing more than a one-off. But the very presence of the NRL makes this a big deal for British rugby league to start with. This is only year two of a five-year arrangement to take games to Las Vegas and with almost 10,000 Super League fans crossing the Atlantic this weekend, it seems certain that they will be invited back to the party next year, with clubs already queuing up to follow in Wigan and Warrington's footsteps. When we hear of executives talking about audience growth, we automatically assume the conversation revolves around new, overseas fans. But Australia – where league rules supreme – experienced a huge boom post-Vegas last year with supporters flocking to the NRL. Fitzpatrick is hopeful this weekend can produce something similar in England, where large parts of the country still have little no league presence. 'They've called it the halo effect back in Australia,' he explains. 'The interest in the NRL surged in a way they didn't think possible back home after last year's Vegas games. All of Super League is promoting this because they know the benefits could be astronomical. This is unlike anything we've ever done. We're going into the biggest sporting market on the planet, armed with the NRL's finances.' Sky Sports, as partners of Super League, are also buying in. They have invested huge sums to promote this and while stunts like inviting Michael Buffer to the season-opener between Wigan and Leigh, as well as constructing a Vegas-style wedding chapel outside Wigan's ground, may seem tacky, they're a sign that the broadcaster is interested. And interest means money, which can only be handy with a TV renewal looming. Sign up to The Recap The best of our sports journalism from the past seven days and a heads-up on the weekend's action after newsletter promotion Wigan have form for trying to be different. This venture will actually cost them money as they're giving up a home game but their owner, Mike Danson, is willing to take the financial hit. This, they sense, is the chance to shake things up not just for the good of the Warriors, but the competition at a time when IMG are urging all clubs to think outside the box. 'It's an absolutely colossal moment for the sport in this country,' Radlinski explains. 'We say that a lot, but Sky are investing money we've never seen before. We used to go to them with ideas; with Vegas, they're coming to us. What it could do for everyone is something I didn't appreciate when I first sent that email. This is not about us. We will all benefit from this. Success for me is two other clubs going next year.' Super League and the NRL being aligned in Las Vegas this weekend and in the years ahead also has ripple effects. There is talk of the World Club Challenge, the meeting of the two major champions, being held there in 2026. Talk of the NRL buying Super League and taking it under its profitable and successful wing won't go away: this, at a time when English clubs are threatening to oust the RFL chair, Simon Johnson, too. Of course we've been here before: but not quite on this scale. British rugby league has never been armed so heavily with the tools with which to finally spread its wings.
