London Broncos winger Lee Kershaw says the daunting prospect of squaring up to world champions Wigan this weekend pales compared with the challenges of self-sufficiency and spin-cycles.

The 24-year-old winger landed at the newly-promoted Super League club in February following an uncertain period as a free agent, after being released by relegated Wakefield at the end of last season.

It has proved a major culture shock for Kershaw, who still lived at home with his parents in Bradford, and had never previously visited the capital bar a fleeting visit to watch the Bantams in a play-off final.

“It’s been a big step, moving out and becoming self-sufficient, and I’m having to learn quickly,” Kershaw, who is currently living close to the Broncos’ training base at Rosslyn Park, told the PA news agency.

“I haven’t tried to wash my whites yet, and I haven’t got an ironing board, but I’m quite a good cook, and my partner will be down in a couple of weeks so she will help me sort myself out.

“I’d never been to London in my life, except to literally get on and off a coach at Wembley. We always used to go on holiday to Bridlington or Blackpool. So it’s been very different but I’m enjoying it.”

Kershaw’s problems finding a new club in the close season came as a surprise given some stand-out performances in a struggling Wakefield side, not least the swashbuckling, length-of-field tries that have become his trademark.

After leaving Belle Vue, Kershaw briefly revelled in his status as a free agent, working a few bar shifts and training with Leeds Rhinos before it slowly dawned on him that he could be left without a club for the start of the new campaign.

“I properly lost my head one night, when my agent and London were talking,” he added. “I’d been pretty cool up to that point but I knew games were coming and I just didn’t want to miss any of them.

“Ever since I started, I’ve always committed to just playing rugby. It’s all I wanted to be and it’s all I want to be at the moment. What I am is a rugby player.”

Arguably Kershaw’s highlight in 2023 was bursting onto a spilled pass by Bevan French to score a try that helped seal his side’s stunning golden-point win over Wigan in July, allowing them to briefly court hopes of top-flight survival.

London showed encouraging signs in last week’s close loss to Hull, and for all his hesitancy with domestic matters, Kershaw is convinced history can repeat itself when they come up against Matt Peet’s newly-crowned world champions on Saturday in Wimbledon.

“I can’t think of any game that I don’t go into thinking we can win,” added Kershaw. “I could be in any team, playing against anyone. I’d say it’s almost delusional.

“Wigan are one of the best teams in the world but I still feel the same way.

“I’ll watch the videos and listen to the coaches and every game I’ll think we’re going to go out and do this. But then you end up getting a few minutes in and realising how tough it’s going to be.”

London Broncos appear to have been doomed to spending a single season back in the Betfred Super League under rugby league’s new grading criteria which will determine the composition of the top flight from 2025 onwards.

The Broncos, who stunned Toulouse to clinch promotion via the Championship Grand Final earlier month, have been ranked a lowly 24th in the indicative grades which were released by RL Commercial and their strategic partner, the sports media giant IMG, on Wednesday.

Under the new criteria, promotion and relegation will be axed next year and replaced by a system which awards points across five key factors including support base, performance, finances, facilities and community integration – with the top 12 scorers automatically assuming a Super League place.

Seven clubs – Leeds, Wigan, St Helens, Catalans Dragons, Warrington, Hull KR and Hull FC – have been awarded Grade A status, which effectively makes them immune to relegation, with the remaining places allocated to the best-scoring Grade B clubs.

London scored just 8.07 out of a possible 25 under the new metric, leaving them, for example, six places below Newcastle Thunder, who resigned from the league and declared themselves unsustainable in the wake of relegation from the Championship last month.

IMG vice-president Matt Dwyer, who is heading the project, denied it was impossible for London to stay up but conceded: “Across all categories London need to be improving, (and) there’s plenty of room for them to improve.

“I would suggest that in 2024 they will be wanting to perform as well as they can to move along that path to being a category A club, and that’s what we’re aiming for.”

The Broncos were not immediately available to comment on the damning verdict, but it represented another blow for the sport in the capital, long championed as a “key area for growth” by rugby league chiefs, following the loss of London Skolars at the end of last season.

But Dwyer insisted the sport has a big future in London, adding: “Interest and participation is still quite high in London, so it still has the base that should make it a core market going forward.

“All that has been identified is the challenge we have to grow the market based off that score for London. It’s a hard market to crack and it’s a market we’ve tried to crack for a long time. It has the right ingredients, but we have to put those ingredients together and bake the cake.”

Based on the current rankings, which have been released in order to give clubs just under a year to address issues and potentially move up the table which will be released at the end of next season, Toulouse and Wakefield would be promoted back into Super League at the expense of London and 13th-placed Castleford.

Castleford have indicated they intend to appeal their indicative grade based on confusion over a point relating to finance, which if accepted would move them into the top 12 at the expense of Challenge Cup winners Leigh Leopards.

Championship winners Featherstone, who lost to the Broncos in their play-off semi-final, also expressed concern over the grading criteria which appear to diminish their own long-held hopes of reaching the top flight.

Featherstone rank 15th on the current list with a score of 10.65, meaning only a prospective expansion of Super League to 14 teams would give them a realistic chance of promotion.

In a wide-ranging statement, Featherstone questioned the weighting of some of the criteria towards what it called “future promises of potential” and said it was deflecting from deeper issues within the game.

“The leaders of the game, including key partners such as IMG, should urgently refocus its attentions on the marketing of the game rather than waste any more time on looking at structures and scoring systems,” said the statement.

“The excitement and jeopardy of our game is driven by what happens on the pitch, as has been admirably shown by London Broncos in their run to Super League.

“We have been promised that this would be at the forefront of the strategy under IMG – we remain unconvinced.”