Goole Vikings have been approved by the RFL Board to join Betfred League One in the 2025 season.
Their application was judged the strongest of three received during a process that has been running through the summer, with the Board also praising Anglian Vipers and Bedford Tigers who were unsuccessful on this occasion.
The Vikings were founded as a community club in 2018 and have been playing in the Yorkshire Men’s League, with junior teams playing in the City of Hull and District Competition.
Rugby League Council members were informed of the decision at their September meeting today at the Salford Community Stadium.
A separate decision will be made at December’s Council meeting about whether Goole should be admitted to membership of the Rugby Football League.
Council also approved a proposal to elect two Vice-Presidents on the same two-year cycle as the RFL President.
Following the election of Adam Hills MBE to succeed Sir Lindsay Hoyle MP as RFL President for 2025-26, Council accepted two nominations to work as Hills’s Vice-Presidents.
Steve Wild, the long-serving Swinton Lions Chief Executive and RFL Council member, follows in the footsteps of Malcolm White, the former Lions chairman who was RFL President in 2001-2.
Danika Priim, a former Bradford Bulls, Leeds Rhinos and England forward who has made a successful move into the media since retirement, will become the fifth woman to serve as the RFL’s President or Vice President since the positions were introduced in 1988 – and the first England Women international.
Kath Hetherington was the RFL’s trailblazing first woman President in 1995, followed by Clare Balding CBE in 2021-22, while Pat Crawshaw was the first woman to be Vice President in 2018 followed by Sue Taylor MBE in 2022-3.
