CONTROVERSIAL characters in rugby league perhaps don’t get more controversial than former enforcer Willie Mason.
Following an illustrious career in the NRL with the likes of Canterbury Bulldogs, Sydney Roosters and North Queensland Cowboys, Mason signed for Hull KR ahead of the 2011 Super League season on a three-year deal.
However, the ex-Australian international would play just six games before being de-registered and leaving the club.
In James Graham’s The Bye Round podcast, Mason had labelled Hull “a sh*thole”, something which he stands by despite hailing the people that live there.
“I had a great time in Hull, no disrespect to Hull,” Mason said on the Levels Network podcast. “When I said Hull is a shi*hole then whatever, get over it. It was a low blow but they’re good people, very good people – no doubt about that.”
Of course, Mason’s exit from Hull KR was well-publicised and now the 43-year-old has revealed all on that departure.
“I’ve never really told the whole story. So I go over there full intention playing three years and this Hudgell guy (Neil Hudgell, the Hull KR chairman) says that because I was eligible for a Tongan and a Samoan passport that I would be under the quota.
“What happens next is Michael Dobson gets injured so they register me and I come over around round six and played about six games with four man of the matches. It was a joke.”
Mason went on to describe how his relationship with Hull FC players was ‘hated’.
“Ogre (Mark O’Meley) is there, Fitzy (Craig Fitzgibbon) is and Willie Manu and all these guys that I love but they’re all playing for FC.
“They were some of my best mates so we started a gang there, but we weren’t allowed to hang out because the f*cking rivalry is crazy and I didn’t know that.
“All I knew at KR was Clint Newton a little bit and he’d been over there for three or four years.
“So I move in with Ogre and it’s like ‘you’ve got to move out’ and I respond like ‘don’t tell me what to do, I’m going to live wherever I want’.
“They come back with ‘you’ve got to live with Clint Newton’, but I’m going to stay with Ogre, so I started living with Ogre.
“Then we got seen coming out of casinos at like six in the morning and all this sort of s**t and they just hated us being together, but we’d won a premiership together, we’re in the Kangaroo tours all that sort of stuff and we’re all best mates.
“Anyway, so they de-registered me.”
Mason goes on to explain why he “could have hammered KR”.
“They could have de-registered Joel Clinton or Dobson, but because they were waiting for that Tongan passport. I said to them that it could take up to a year: do you expect me to wait around and not even play?
“They were going to loan me to another team. Who the f**k do they think I am? Loan me to another team.
“I came to play for Hull KR and they tried to play both sides and get another international player in, but it doesn’t work like that. I said ‘I’m your franchise player.’
“Anyway, Toulon ring. I could have hammered KR and got every cent from them.
“I was on sh*t loads of money but I said ‘keep your money. Just let me out of my contract’. Then I went to Toulon, and I’d never played a rugby union game.”
