North Wales Crusaders aim for Super League with ‘sustainable’ mantra

On the field, head coach Carl Foster led Crusaders to a 2025 campaign in which Crusaders finished three points clear of Workington Town and with a 332 points difference. It indicates the owners, who took over pre-season, were ambitious in their intent.

Watkins says the reaction of some opposition fans has also indicated Crusaders are being taken seriously.

“I’m getting abused now going back to the car, it suggests that we potentially have ruffled some feathers out there, which is awesome,” he says.

But again rooted in reality, Watkins says Crusaders accept that if, as expected, they are part of the the RFL’s future second tier, the on-field challenges next season will be significant.

“We know we’re going to lose a lot of games,” he says. “We accept that those learning opportunities are coming, but the reason why we’re going to lose those games is to learn how we’re going to go up the league and develop our opportunities.”

Watkins had even been hoping the RFL would have continued with this season’s play-offs despite the decision to amalgamate the Championship and League One and even though Crusaders squad had been “battered” during the latter stages of 2025.

“I was putting both arms and legs up in the air and saying ‘we want to play the play-offs. Let’s still play them’.

“We want them because we want to play more games of rugby and compete against the highest level we possibly can.”

He adds: “I don’t feel odd about not getting absolute promotion as a consequence of it. We should be proud about what we’ve done, proud about what we represent for north Wales.

“And win, lose or draw the first five, six, seven or eight games next season, I do think that people will be taking this super seriously coming into the Championship, and whether they’re historic championship clubs or they’re historic League One clubs, everybody’s going to be ready for it.

“And that’s something we’ve found the last month or so of this season that it’s almost like a cup final for one or two of those sides, because the best they can hope for their season is to beat the Crusaders, which we’ve got to take as a privileged position.”

In 2026, no matter which tier they are in, Crusaders will consider themselves the underdogs, albeit with a burning ambition to become one of the teams to beat in the longer term future.