Taken from a blog on the BBc Website.

2.5million in admin costs = Compo to Leeds Rhinos.

And lets not forget that Walker Morris represented the Bulls in the ensuing court battle - guess what, Caisley is a senior partner there.... Wonder if they represented us no win no fee???? doubt it! www.walkermorris.co.uk/content.a ... rid=100017 www.5rb.com/case/Leeds-Rugby-Ltd ... ldings-Ltd

And lets not forget that Walker Morris represented the Bulls in the ensuing court battle - guess what, Caisley is a senior partner there.... Wonder if they represented us no win no fee???? doubt it! www.walkermorris.co.uk/content.a ... rid=100017 www.5rb.com/case/Leeds-Rugby-Ltd ... ldings-Ltd

Came across this piece from last year I hadn't seen it before but a lot interesting comments on there a few from Adey and relevant to whats been going on www.thetelegraphandargus.co.uk/s ... ulls_back/

Came across this piece from last year I hadn't seen it before but a lot interesting comments on there a few from Adey and relevant to whats been going on www.thetelegraphandargus.co.uk/s ... ulls_back/

As far as Harrisgate is concerned the main heads are:
1. Compo to Leeds
2. Legal costs to Leeds' lawyers
3. Legal costs spent by Bulls defending the claim (and maybe in pursuing their own claims)

Unless the parties involved agreed to release the actual figures into the public domain then all anyone can do is speculate, and I'd speculate that the total of that lot might be well into seven figures, but not close to £2.5m.

The compo and legal costs certainly hit the bank account, but you could argue that the "real" cost of the Harris signing was the disruption to the rest of the squad.

All signings have an element of risk - a player might not fit the playing pattern, pick up a serious injury, or in Herbert's case just be plain crap, but in this case - and this is not the fault of Harris himself - several other key and developing players left as a result.

When a team pulls together - as it has been doing in the last few weeks - it will be a match for a collection of stars. At least thats what I told myself when I bought my ticket for the Warrington match!

But nobody would have any great issue at all for any signing bthat simply didn't work out - and while Iestyn never regained the dizzy heights of his younger days, he was an excellent player for us. But even if he hadn't have been, anyone should accept that any signing may or may not "work".

The sort of issues which ARE relevant to the present discussion are first, and most obviously, the farrago as to whether we were free to sign him in the first place, and second the alleged gross mismanagement of the signing situation which if what has been written is true, resulted in us losing Leon Pryce (who wanted the No. 6 slot for himself and understandably so), Jamie Peacock (who claims he'd been told the cupboard was bare and then we sign Harris) and those sort of ramifications.

Could we have signed Harris AND kept stars such as Pryce and Peacock happy? Well, presumably, there would have been a way. It's only basically man management, after all. Leaving the direct finances aside, I was devastated that we lost the services of Pryce and Peacock and firmly believe that it should have been avoided.

Agree fully with your assessment of Harris' playing record with us. He always played for the Bulls with commitment and no little skill, and to be blunt, his only drawback was that he just wasn't the Iestyn Harris of old, which meant the (reported) salary he was given was probably more than a little bit over the top.


I sort of agree about the man management too, to be fair, though it would have taken the wisdom of Soloman to square a circle in which Harris, Pryce and Peacock were all going to be happy. Though I guess the club fully realised that fitting in Iestyn would cause immense problems and, the powers that were, were prepared to let them depart. Not the best bit of business nor the most glorious bit of our history, it must be said.

To be honest we don't know the costs of the court case other than Leeds/Hetherington/Caddick were wanting a reported £3m. Since it was ultimately settled out of court we must assume it would have been much less, although, to be fair to the OP, when you add in the salary (reportedly, £1m over 4 years IIRC) to the amount of compo (maybe C £1m?) plus legal costs (both sides, presumably) then maybe £2.5m isn't all that far away from the mark for the cost of the whole "Harris affair", though obviously the salary was really part of the the overall 'running costs' and would have been there whether we'd signed him or not .

Whether he was free to sign was the big issue. Much opinion said the Leeds case was a restraint of trade, indeed Iestyn's own legal people said he was free to sign, so it clearly wasn't cut and dried and poor decision as it turned out to be, it wasn't just the club who got it wrong.

The way I see it we never needed Harris, signing him was so unnecessary.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing

I don't recall there being many objections at the time

Must confess I did have some reservations but I trusted Nobby's judgement that he thought Harris would improve us. As it was the effect of his signing led directly to Pryce and Peacock leaving. I wonder if Nobby would do it again knowing what he knows now!

As we know now Harris signing was the worst signing the club has made in it's history.

and it must have made a few other players question any loyalty to the club seeing Leon treated that way. The position he had waited so patiently for, playing anywhere asked of him in the backs, and the position that some said when he came into the side at 17 or whatever he was destined to fill.

To repeat myself, I thought Harris was past his best before he went to union, so when he signed for us I used my hindsight to say it was a rubbish signing. Any doubts I reserved to myself were about the contract, and that was because we had a partner in a major law firm as our chairman who surely would know about such matters...

and you have to admire Caisley for being able to dress that up so well that he is able to get investors backing him.

It wasn't Caisley who drove our greatest home grown player of the last 10 years out so that can't be pinned on him.