Club Statement | Senior Leadership Structure

02/09/2025

The Board of Sheffield Eagles has announced a restructuring of senior leadership positions focussed on addressing the challenges faced by the club over the past 15 months and aimed at addressing poor results and performances in the men’s team ahead of the 2026 season. 

As highlighted at the recent fans forum, the need for the club to move to a more financially sustainable model and reduce the reliance that it has on benefactors is a key priority and, starting immediately, John Whaling has been engaged as Director of Commercial Operations with the brief of taking on the club's commerical activities and events calendar to increase commercial income and identifying areas of saving and efficiency to reduce costs.

John was one of the founding directors of the post-merger Sheffield Eagles, prior to which he was a long-time supporter of the club. He was elected RFL President between 2011/12 and also previously acted as a trustee of what we now know as the Eagles Foundation. More recently, John has been working with Rotherham Titans in a similar commercial role, which has seen the Titans and the Titans Foundation see a significant increase in revenue and efficiency.

Andy Tyers, who holds the honour of being the Sheffield Eagles' first-ever player, will take on the role of Director of Men’s Team Rugby and will directly line manage Head Coach Craig Lingard and will provide Craig with support in recruiting and retaining players, helping Craig to optimise the structure and recruit to his backroom staff and to support Craig in embedding the desired culture within the Men’s team. Now retired, Andy’s professional career saw him hold senior leadership roles in the IT Recruitment industry. As well as playing for the club, Andy has also coached within the first team and academy set ups and in later times  has been a director of the club.

The club’s RFL Council representative will now be Club President Chris Noble MBE, who will take over from Director of Club Operations Mark Hannigan, allowing Mark to focus more on the day-to-day running of the club.

Speaking on behalf of the board, Jeremy Levine said: “The board of directors at Sheffield Eagles share the frustrations and disappointment of the club’s loyal supporters over results and performances from the men’s team in the current season. The season has been very challenging, with the well-documented off-field issues having impacted the club, the men’s playing squad only having a limited pre-season, being decimated by injuries and having some players exercising departure clauses making it very challenging for our head coach to select a team at times. 

“We are working hard behind the scenes on recruitment and retention of players, with news of signings and re-signings to be made public in the near future. There will also be other improvements within the club taking effect soon to help us move forward after this difficult season.

“Thank you for your continuing support and we look forward to sharing more exciting news in due course.”