Crusaders' northern flight a Super League test for the Noble art

Brian Noble has started each of the last nine Super League seasons with high hopes of reaching the Grand Final, a mission he accomplished five times running with Bradford before being denied by Leeds in each of the last three years with Wigan. But after a stressful winter in which he has had knee surgery, been forced to abandon his plans for a new life in south Wales, and regularly questioned his sanity, the most successful British rugby league coach for decades has had to set more realistic targets for 2010. "Four wins? Absolutely, yeah, I'd take that for a start," says Noble, reflecting on the fact that the Crusaders team he took over last autumn managed only three in their disastrous debut season in the Super League. Since then they have been forced to scuttle north to Wrexham following the shock withdrawal of the investors who were to have financed a move from Bridgend to Newport, and their prospects of competing with Leeds in tonight's ill-conceived season opener are best summed up by Noble's inability even to risk sending a team to a trial match in London two weeks ago – and the blank page where their squad should be listed in Super League's official media guide. "Let's be honest, the actual legalities of this club weren't signed until a couple of weeks ago," he adds, a revelation that will further fuel the resentment of those lower league clubs who have been infuriated by the Rugby Football League's indulgence of the floundering Welsh experiment. "Bear in mind all the clubs had long since completed their recruitment, so what's left? You're starting there. Or on the favour of ringing chief executives in Australia." "We've had no preparation time, we're still in our recruitment and preparation mode. But hey, it's rugby league, I've got enough grey hairs to know that anything can happen on a Friday night." Noble was not quite starting from scratch, as a hard core of the players who dug deep to provide some memorable moments in the Crusaders' debut season – notably their wins at Bradford, and at home to Salford and Noble's Wigan – agreed to swap south Wales for north. He has also called in his contacts to add some handy new signings such as Nick Youngquest, an Australian full-back who made a big impact at Gateshead last year, and the former Great Britain wing Gareth Raynor – at least until he faces charges of counterfeiting and fraud in April. Such is Noble's new life scrabbling around the bargain basement, quite a shock for a man whose previous signings have included Lesley Vainikolo for Bradford, and Trent Barrett for Wigan. "I've done everything else, haven't I?" he says with a shrug, attempting again to explain his motivation in taking on such an apparently thankless task – possibly to himself. But Noble leaves no doubt that working with a collection of mostly antipodean journeymen half an hour's drive from Widnes is no closer to what he signed up to in joining the Crusaders than it is to the RFL's motivation in granting a three-year Super League licence to the club in the summer of 2008. "Everyone's prepared to accept something in the short term," he says. "I was about half an hour from signing up for a house in Cardiff. And for whatever reason it went belly-up. Through the hard work of certain people it's been resurrected in Wrexham. The Wrexham people impress me, they have great ambition. Did I sit there at the end of the bed and wonder what I'm getting up for? Absolutely. Of course you do, you're lying if you deny it. In the deeper recesses of your mind you wonder why you push yourself to create something. "But one of the things that excited me in south Wales was working with some Welsh kids and getting them up. That might take two, three, four years, who knows, but I do know there are players down there who want to play rugby league and need to be given the opportunity to play Super League. That's still my thought. "We've got to find a conduit from south Wales to north Wales now we're 200 miles further away … [and] the immediate priority is to get a concept together that the people of Wrexham can enjoy. So the short-term and long-term goals, while the club may be very different from three months ago, still remain the same in essence. I'm still as committed to that as I was before. But it's been very difficult, there's no doubt about that." Noble has enjoyed considerable success in the past against the Leeds team who have taken over from Bradford as Super League's standard-bearers, shedding their previous reputation as big-spending underachievers by building a team around outstanding products of their academy such as Danny McGuire, Rob Burrow and the captain Kevin Sinfield. Having become the first club to win three consecutive Grand Finals by beating St Helens last autumn, the Rhinos are warm favourites for a fourth championship season, starting with a comfortable win against the Crusaders. Noble would not dispute those odds, but believes he has taken a significant step towards rebuilding the morale and credibility of the Crusaders by using the contacts of the Wrexham football manager Dean Saunders and his own friendship with Martin O'Neill to secure the use of Aston Villa's training base in the build-up to their daunting first match. "It's great sneaking up on people, and I think we've got a fabulous opportunity to do that this year," he said.