I'm with Saddened.

Sports contracts are not the same as standard employment contracts. Players want clubs to sign them up long term when it suits them. That's understandable since it provides a guaranteed income (including if they get injured) for its duration. That means long-term contracts have real value to players. If these are challenged in court and its found that there should be no penalty for walking away from a contract a player was apparently happy to sign at the time, then why on earth should clubs offer anything other than short-term contracts to any player?

In the end it would help a few players jump ship for more money, but hurt the sport as a whole and the players in aggregate.

I also don't quite understand the RFU's stance on this. They have very similar contracts, to which the same laws apply. If you can challenge a player jumping ship on the basis of moving to another sport, how long will it take before a player challenges a club and sport's ability to stop them signing for any other club in the same sport at the drop of a hat? Even if that weren't the case, can you imagine the outcry if a bunch of England RU internationals decided to do a Hayne and try the NFL, missing seasons in the process?

It may suit RU now because they are the ones doing the poaching, but that may not always be the case.

People are forever repeating this 'contracts mean nothing' mantra, but it simply isn't true. Yes, it's true that a contract no longer ensures, in practice, that a player will stay with a club for the agreed period. But what it does ensure is that if a player insists on leaving then the club is in a position to be financially compensated when he moves. Likewise, a club may, as you say, encourage a contracted player to move on, but the contract means that this player will be in a position to negotiate a healthy severance fee.

Contracts are not meaningless, but Clarke, Diamond and Solomona are currently engaged in an attempt to make them meaningless.

At the end of the day both clubs will come to some form of agreement, though after excessive money has been spent in courts and as ever the legal industry making more than anyone out of it, I'm not convinced that if their be a settlement it will be anything like being mentioned, that is life.

Feel and it has been said before you need to tread careful, even on social media, about claims which can be seen as libel, once in the public arena, even if deleted it will still be there in some form, I would tread most careful with flippant comments without clear evidence.

Fair enough, and point taken. I am, of course, only expressing my view of what seems to be the case based on the information that is in the public domain, and should have made that clearer.

my understanding is that to deal with RL clubs agents must be licensed by the RFL, simply don't renew the licence.