More likely what's to stop leeds keeping hold of Hardaker because he wants to win things, but now having cap space to poach Walker or Green from hkr ...

Just to throw something into the mix.... Some clubs are worried about the spending power/allure of the bigger clubs in SL.... Don't forget, the bigger clubs in SL are worried about the spending power/allure of the NRL and Yawnion.... Teams like my own are trying hard to hang onto our players too!!

PS, i don't expect any sympathy, and don't want any... I'll leave that to the perennial whiners...

Is one marquee signing enough, shouldn't it be two or (my preference)three?

How many players in SL are currently paid more than £175k? How many are paid more than £100k?

Serious questions

Thought fev brought Hardaker through not Leeds. The cap space used for him would be the same at Leeds and HKR

Pointless questions. No one is going to know he answer to it.

About as pointless as 75% of this thread then. The point I am making is it isn't going to make much if any difference other than to increase the pay of 10 or so players. Remember if Sam Tomkins had gone somewhere other than Wigan he would have counted for £175k of the SC and not £100k as he will at Wigan. Is there really the money in the game to pay people £200k+?

Probably just the very top players on that amount like O'loughlin, Sinfield etc.

I know a young prop at Wigan who's on 60k and I would suggest that's probably the average rate in SL.

hardaker counts as a home grown leeds player.

Rough calculation is cap of £1.8m (including various dispensations) divided by squad players 25 = £72,000 average wage.

From that I'd assume that teams spending the full cap will have a good few on over £100,000pa because they'll also have their squad padded out with young kids on £20/£30k.

I'm guessing he got dispensation?

No he qualifies as home grown. Though I wouldn't be surprised if the club trained criteria have been secretly changed.

No doubt they will need to be changed as club trained is an SL thing.

IIRC Hardaker just sneaked in under the Club Trained Rules for Leeds as we signed him when he was 18.

Though the club trained definition seem to have disappeared from the Operational Rules, as has the rule saying that clubs need to have a certain number of club trained players in their squad.
Presumably this was done away with at the same time the number of Non-Federation Trained players allowed in a squad was bizarrely increased to 7.

I thought the rule was that you had to spent 4 years at a club prior to 21st birthday to count as home grown. Anyway this is the RFL and they change the rules more times than Nigel Wood has hot dinners.

The rule was 3 full seasons before ineligible for u21's.

Leeds signed Hardaker in October 2010. So 3 full seasons would be 2011, 2012 & 2013 seasons. Hardaker was still eligible for the u21's in 2013. So he does just sneak in.
To be honest in situations like this (that are admittedly few and far between) I think both Leeds & Fev could claim credit to developing Hardaker.


Yep. It annoys me when rules are changed and they don't tell anyone. The Non-Fed Trained Rules were brought in a few years back with a bit of fanfare as they were going to significantly reduce the amount of overseas players over time as they dealt with the issue of Kolpak's and Aussies with EU passports which made the Overseas Quota a joke.

And to be fair, they have.

But the original plan was that clubs would have 5 Non-Fed trained players and this would reduce over the years to 3. Also there was a stipulation that clubs had to have a certain amount of "Home Grown" or "Club Trained" players in the squad. IIRC it was either 7 or 8. So you could have a max of 5 Aussies, a minimum of 7/8 Homegrown players and then the other 12 or 13 players would be "Federation Trained" ie British or French.

But then a season or so ago that was suddenly changed with no announcement. It was simply changed in the Operational Rules.
Now you can have 7 Aussies (Non-Federation Trained) and the Club Trained part has simply been deleted.
One suspects it was to help out both London & Salford.

But it's annoying because then no-one ever knows.

I also think the number of Non-Federation Trained/Quota players and number of academy products at each club should be publicised each year. So that fans and the RL media can keep track and hold clubs and the RFL to account.