Wrong and wrong. You don't seem to understand the basic point, that a player is on a Fixed Term contract, and the club agrees to pay him £X for Y years. That's it. Dismissal doesn't come into it. As long as neither party breaches the contract, then they have to pay and he has to play. I haven't seen it, but you are surely not suggesting any player has a contract GUARANTEEING first team rugby??

Are you seriously telling us you think that all the players in SL clubs' first team squads who don't get a regular game could theoretically refuse to play at all, or claim this amounted to some sort of a dismissal? Well, that must make picking the team tricky especially at places like Wigan and Warrington.

"Sorry Shane, I know you want to pick Tomkins again but you need to give A.N.Stiff some regular game time so he doesn't take us for dismissal". Is that really how you think it works?


IMO his agent ("management"? ) has feck all to do with the contractual relationship between player and club. They might advise him to have porridge for breakfast, it would be equally relevant.

Widening the argument there I think FA. My argument is the player is contracted to the club, therefore is contracted to play for the club. I never mentioned a any dispute relating to not getting picked, only being farmed out against their will to a dual registration club in a lesser competition. IMO, this is a separate argument.

I agree with FA

Well that is me and you finished Roger.

Well that is me and you finished Roger.





Don't be like that baby x

I think you’re confused.
1. You haven’t seen Whitehead’s contract so you don’t know what’s in it. Therefore you don’t know whether the club can dictate to a player that he is farmed out to a dual reg club.
2. However it’s even less complicated than that, since he is not a slave, and cannot be “forced to play Championship rugby” or indeed forced to do anything at all. The only issue is, does any refusal amount to a breach of his contract.
3. There is no sensible distinction between being farmed out to a dual reg club, and being told he’ll not either play or even train with the first team, in the terms you were discussing, namely “being forced out by the current management”.
4. In any case I am struggling to understand how it could be concluded they were “forcing out” a player who, despite being under contract, has very publicly slagged the club and insisted he wants to leave. Maybe you could help. And explain that one, as it beats the hell out of me.


Now you need to be very careful. Awford produced medical evidence that led to events turning out the way they did. I do hope you aren’t claiming this was fake, and something like a scam engineered by him and his agent? I’m not sure whoever provided the medical report would be too impressed.

As for shopping around, surely, that is precisely the full time job of every player’s agent? As in “perfectly normal”? What do you think agents actually do?


… is a waste of time as while the player is bound by them, they are not his contract with the club, which is a completely different thing…
.. unless you actually read it, in which case it says no such thing


Yes, you’ve moved on from casting serious aspersions about Awford to suggesting that Whitehead might get round any request to play by faking injury and being able to fool doctors. I’m not sure he’d be happy at any suggestion he might act in this deceitful way nor do I think for a second that the Bulls’ medical staff are so stupid that they would fall for any such ridiculous ploy.

There are those who succeed and get it right...

... and then there are epic fails

We had a similar run of events when a player of our wanted to move to St Helens a number of years back, 'Badback', as he became known, refused to play for the club again [due to a "bad back"], though this cleared up almost instantaneously when exposed to the miracle working, physios at Saints...

They were semi-pro back then, of course, and I'd guess the contracts were much different to the current ones.

Ha Ha Ha!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Eliot can play if he apologizes???

I thought Tommy Cooper had passed away???

Eliot doesn't have to do anything now does he?

I'll say this only once:-

Eliot would not have put himself in this position without having another deal lined up.The fact that its not public yet is an irrelevance and what really caused this situation in the first place?

Most are spouting cr*p without having one FACT about what's behind it all.Its entertaining though reading the keyboard warriors coming up with their conclusions/solutions to it all.Eliot has talent and someone ELSE wants to harness that TALENT,that's it.But what was the initial cause that made Eliot.a bradford lad, say "Im Free",that's what you should be mulling over imo.

A new club/challenge awaits Eliot,time for the Board and our "Honorary" Chairman to get things moving in the right direction.They took the applause,now its time to deliver.Call me picky but,"No decent signings" for next season is not the way I would try and increase season tickets sales.
Was not convinced BEFORE,but what has happened since makes me even more sceptical.
They'll do well to make the top 8,but even if they did they'd be out first game.
Long,long hard road ahead imo.

No one said there won't be any "decent" signings next year, IIRC it was "marquee" signings that we couldn't afford.

And yes, of course it is going to be a long hard road ahead [wasn't that a John Mayall album back in the sixties?] that's what we signed up for, and be honest, on reduced competition money and no Mr Moneybags, how could it be any different?

If we're talking contracts, it would be interesting to know the disciplinary options in a standard RL contract.

Something similar to the football option of "fine of up to 2weeks wages for refusing to train in reserves" would change things a little.

I have no idea if RL have those kind of clauses in their standard contracts although they are fairly widespread in football where training with the reserves is seen as a standard punishment for various offences.