Confident Featherstone Rovers ready for anything that 2021 throws at them

The Rugby Football League announced on Friday the competition has targeted April 2-4 as the delayed start date of the 2021 campaign with clubs also entering the Challenge Cup first round on the weekend of March 21.

That means it will be just over a full year since Championship and League 1 clubs were initially halted by the pandemic and, therefore, the desire to finally get back out on the field is clearly palpable.

Longo admits it is “massively pleasing” to have a date in place after the original plan of end of February was scrapped due to the latest national lockdown.

“We’ve been one of those clubs who were trying our damndest last year to get fixtures on,” he told The Yorkshire Post.

“We constantly got delayed. We were trying to replace Toronto Wolfpack when they got removed (from Super League) and people thought it was all a publicity stunt. It wasn’t; it was just a hunger to get back playing. This is what we’re all employed to do: to play rugby league.

“We get that the current landscape is very fluid and it is frustrating for everyone, not just from the clubs’ point of view but the governing body. We’re constantly changing the goalposts and it is hard to keep up with.

“But we do now feel we have some light at the end of the tunnel. All the clubs have agreed we are absolutely set now on behind-closed-doors fixtures and for perhaps longer than we anticipated as that’s looking likely it could go possibly out to May or June now.

“But we’ve all said that if that is the case we’ll have to do it and find a way to do it. Most clubs have had significant help from Government and local authorities so we should all have a bit of surplus money in our accounts to cut across if that does happen.”

Clubs will hope to see fans back in grounds sooner rather than later. However, Longo, who saw Featherstone miss out to Leigh Centurions as the club chosen to replace Toronto in Super League in 2021, feels all should be able to accommodate that worst-case scenario given access to furlough and the government loan.

“I think so, if clubs have done it right,” he said.

“We’ve all pretty much been on furlough. Our staff now are on part-time furlough and a lot have been for some time. If clubs have accessed the funding out there, they should have some surplus funds in their bank accounts.

“Obviously, we’ve got lucky now with the PCR testing being switched to lateral flow as that significantly reduces those costs.

“It’s gone from £75 per person – about £5,000 per month – last year to £4 per person or around £160 per month, now £320 per month that we’re getting tested twice per week. That was probably the main reason for clubs to not even consider getting back playing last year; £5,000 per month into your cashflow just for testing was a substantial amount.

“I can’t speak for other clubs but we’re in that position where we’ve satisfied our Board that even if we have to play behind closed doors for the best part of the season, we feel we could get to the end of the season.”

Meanwhile, the ambitiousWest Yorkshire club – who lost to Toronto in the 2019 Million Pound Game – feel they have their best squad yet to achieve promotion.

Head coach James Webster has seen the likes of Super League regulars Junior Moors, Kris Welham and Craig Kopczak all sign up and Longo said: “The squad’s got everything: youth, experience, power – the lot. We’ve learned our lessons from previous seasons.

“This season we’ve kind of agreed as a Board and club that we have only got this opportunity to get promoted; it might be a change in dynamics in 2022 with a potential new broadcast deal so we are kind of looking at this as a year where it has to be all in.

“We’re quite lucky with the players who have become available. We’ve moved pretty swiftly on a few. Kris Welham, for instance, we didn’t give any other club the opportunity to get their claws in.; as soon as he became available we snapped him straight up.

“It’s a great squad. It’s got some depth to it as well which it hasn’t had in previous years when we’ve been pretty much reliant on Leeds Rhinos. That (dual-registration) has been removed now. We just can’t wait to get going.”