Aaron Bower on twitter made note of reminding his followers that the current Odsal lease expires at the end of May. This was in the same tweet as the news about the six figure sum for Wilson...

OK, before this post was edited, it said that the chairman wanted to cash in on Storton and Wilson

IF that is true (I know, it's an internet forum

) then it's the single most worrying aspect of this. Does it suggest that we are positioning ourselves to be, in effect, a feeder club for the likes of Huddersfield?

And that our much vaunted Academy is a mechanism for producing players who can then to sold on to SL clubs so that we can keep going at our current level?

As long as we remain in the lower leagues then we have no choice. No player will be loyal to us if a SL club comes along. As soon as you accept that, you have two options. You force a player to honour his contract and he leaves for free when it ends, or you demand a fee and let the player continue his career in SL.

If someone wants to pay us a six figure sum for any player, I wouldn't blame our chairman one bit for agreeing to it. Do I like being in this position? Absolutely not. But we are simply not in a position to be able to do anything about it unfortunately and that is not the fault of the current guy in charge.

It does look bad but it could be that, as Bower suggests, there is a need for cash coming into the business for other areas needing attention? For the first time in 15 years I am going to be optimistic and believe AC has a plan to get the stadium debacle sorted one way or another...

How may cried foul when Newlove was swapped for three 'mediocre' players...lets just hope this is another stunning move (let's face it, we are certainly due one)

My concern if other players followed Wilson out of the door quickly would be that we’re struggling to stay afloat.

Selling Wilson is one thing but if Storton and others left then Chalmers better do some explaining. It would suggest his budget isn’t adding up.

I hope I’m wrong but we’ve seen this sort of thing before…

Can't argue with any of that.

Storton contract expires at the end oolf this season. Maybe Storton made a wish to sign for an SL club at the end of the season and Chalmers faces a decision to cash in now and let him leave for nothing in 7 months time.

As Nothus said, we're just in a position that we can't offer some of these players SL opportunities now and many are good enough for it. Maybe he's planning on sorting the stadium out. Maybe he has in fact over budgeted.

£100k is more than our central distribution income so I can't blame Chalmers for cashing in as much as it pains me to see out other clubs benefit from our hardwork in developing them.

Storton was reported to have signed until the end of the 2020 season. https://www.keighleynews.co.uk/sport/sp ... ulls-deal/

Storton was reported to have signed until the end of the 2020 season. https://www.keighleynews.co.uk/sport/sp ... ulls-deal/

£ 999,999 is also six figure sum. ( We can always dream ! )

I don't think we can stop a player going to super league if he has the opportunity. I just hope we don't see him in the colours of one of our rivals on loan/dual reg.
The worrying thing regarding finances is that I seem to remember, at the time we let Mcnally go, Kear saying he"d see how things went before deciding to sign a replacement. A couple of weeks ago he said we wouldn't sign another player unless someone left first so the position seems to have changed since the start of the season.

As I understood it, he was one of the standout props in the academy games vs Australia in December. Several SL clubs showed interest then, enough that it was put to Olly &his agent for a decision and he decided to stay here, as he was more likely to get gametime & develop.

I accept that in our current position we have to consider reasonable offers for our players. I just wish there was some sort of mechanism to say that we have first dibs if the SL club are looking to loan said player out at some point in the future. I know the Bentley example has been used a fair bit, but he seems to have slipped off the radar a bit since joining St Helens. Would he have continued developing better at the Bulls where he was more familiar.. who knows. It’s just frustrating to see our young players leave for SL only to see them propping up another Championship club on dual reg.

I just hope that we are not selling players to stay afloat. Would like to see a first refusal clause written into any transfer deal should players become available for loan.