Paul Broadbent is a former Great Britain and England Rugby League player and has been an athlete mentor with Dame Kelly Holmes Trust for over ten years. We caught up with him on the eve of the Rugby League World Cup in October 2022.

What are you looking forward to about the Rugby World Cup?

It’s always a special time because you see a lot of players getting an opportunity to play in a World Cup that possibly because of their heritage or the competition they play in normally, they might not get that exposure normally. So, for Irish or Scottish players for example this is a great opportunity to play in a showcase tournament against the likes of England, Australia or New Zealand. It’s a great platform for new faces to show what they can do on the world stage, there’s always one or two players that come through that previously people might not have heard of.

It's also a great opportunity to see where the game’s at internationally. Previously I worked with Italy a few years ago and it’s great to see them there, but also countries like Greece for example that are starting to show up quite well. The more that players from countries like these can get an opportunity to play against the top tier teams, the more they will progress and improve.

What memories does it bring back?

Just brilliant times… you get to the stage where your career has been finished for a while and you look back on things and you think about if the game is different now to what it was then, but you know it always changes and evolves. I came through at a transitional period where I started playing part time but by the end of my career I had become a full time rugby league player. The players these days are mainly full time so are developing physically much younger and get more experience at a young age. The 1995 World Cup was a great experience for me, it was the biggest competition internationally for me where I’d been a first choice. It was a real challenge to put yourself up against some of the best players in the world, but it was also a real privilege to be involved in games that have so much prestige and have really stood the test of time.

What do you think of it being an inclusive tournament with men’s, women’s and wheelchair tournaments being played at same time?

I think the way they’re making the game inclusive is absolutely superb. I went to an awards presentation evening at Sheffield Eagles recently and they had the wheelchair team there, the learning disability team were also there alongside the men’s and women’s teams. It was such a brilliant night, and it was so uplifting to see some of the people who might have felt like they’d been side lined for so long and not feel like they were able to belong to a club or participate but now there is a window and an opportunity for them to go and play their part and feel like they belong to a sport. The confidence and the way they change as people is absolutely incredible, where at school they might not have been able to play these traditional sports but now I see them in rugby league being equal with everyone else and able to take part.

When you think about the people we work with at the Trust, it happens quite frequently that they’re low on confidence and not keen to put themselves out there. They might not be sporty, but they’ve all got something to offer but when we run our programmes you start to see them growing in confidence and they start to look like different people. I think that’s what’s a really incredible thing about what’s going on in rugby league these days is that it’s really inclusive and everyone has an opportunity to get involved and be on the same page. It’s great that that everyone has the opportunity to be out there, under the lights, being part of the sport and just as valuable as everyone else.