In all fairness, Puletua would have won his case had he not realised that he hadn’t paid tax on his year 1 “additional payment” and would have to pay tax on anything paid to him relating to his year 2 “additional payments”. It was settled out of court. Theo would have also won his case as the club were in breach of contract for not providing (at that time) players with private medical insurance (RFL requirement), hence why it never went legal.

Kevin Locke didn’t have a leg to stand on, literally. I think it was a case of nothing ventured, nothing gained with him after listening to his legal advisors who probably made a tidy sum from it all. Same will happen with Rangi too no doubt.

Rangi's case might be groundless but more generally with regards to mental illness in my experience it's the employer who disengages from the employee not the other way round.

So two genuine cases then, that's some hefty list of unpaid players.

Employee disengagement is one of the most common forms of absenteeism in the workplace. It is when employees are uncommitted to their jobs, coworkers and/or the company. They are most likely to miss work because they can't find the motivation to go.

I find this rather hard to believe because players often require surgical procedures throughout their careers. Surely the club has a comprehensive medical policy that covers every player? If they didn't, to pay on an individual basis for each private treatment would be an astronomical cost.

Also if the breach of contract applied in Theo's case why didn't it apply to other players in legal dispute with the club?

I thought Theo's dispute was over a lease of a vehicle? Unless someone "in the know" was telling me porkies.

Getting irked of the tales TBH ,about what was due to them.
what was due to us was the commitment to the club to turn up & wear our shirt with pride . 'We' are owed far more than they are in that respect.
Makes me nostalgic for days when you only got paid if you played ,and you only got paid well if you won ..

Was he insured for that?

I completely agree. It's a consequence of players being full time, the contract system and agents/lawyers unfortunately. If players screwed up or didn't perform years ago they knew it would hit them hard in the pocket and they'd have their wives/partners to answer to. Screw things up these days and you can get a dream move to the treble winners Leeds Rhinos.

I assume it did, but in Theo's case he had an agent who was on the ball and used Salford's breach against them. It was a good few months ago I was told about this so cant remember the story 100%, but it was something along the lines of a lapsed policy that either hadn't been renewed or paid. The club were struggling to find a suitable alternative group policy and I think ended up needing to take out individual policies for each player. It sounded like a typical Martin Vickers gaff.



Never heard anything to do with a vehicle lease.

According to the CBI genuine medical reasons are the biggest cause of absenteeism at 87.5%

I can't fault HH for that but isn't that every players duty to their club? Anyway I haven't criticised him myself but I'm not going to jump to the defence of a lad that:-

1. Doesn't want to play for Salford anymore.
2. Couldn't resist making a comment to the media about having the last laugh against the club I support.

Have we not been laughed at enough over the past two years?

corrected it for you.

I disagree. Nobody was laughing at Salford when we were playing in county cup finals or getting to three challenge cup semi's against all the odds. OK granted we have never had a champion side in that period but I always felt we had an honest team and we punched above our weight. (For a city that's not really endorsed RL in big numbers since the 1930's and late 60's for 2-3 years) You only have to look at the decline of clubs like Oldham, Swinton, Rochdale and Leigh over the past few decades to appreciate we did better than similar local clubs. I also think supporters of other clubs didn't have the same dislike for us like some do now. A lot of people simply want Salford to fail and to laugh at us because of all the money spent recently.