Clearly we have two schools of thought here, one that says there's no such thing as bad publicity and one that says keep your cards close to your chest until you have a winning hand.
FWIW I subscribe to the latter view.

Maybe, just maybe thats because nobody had official signed!!!

Hope I'm wrong.

The loan scenario got a mention in the RLE 10/6 beneath the photo from the Horse Racing at Chester.
It would be understandable if Bradford refused that as they want money and Whitehead offloaded if he doesn't want to be there.
I don't recall him being on anyones wish list when there was a thread about potential signings.
His agent didn't do much research for him rlLast Yearrl proving that just as following the Forever Reds Meeting to the Wakefield performance rla weekrl is a long time in rugby league.

On Boots n All last night,Eddie and John Kear seemed to confirm, that E W had signed for us

Clearly they jumped the gun, as a lot of fans have, and assumed that the clubs agreeing a fee meant player would automatically go along with it. Piece on sporting life now saying noble has given up hope of signing whitehead in time for this weeks game. Also mentions Catalans have tipped up their interest in him. Given that's where most bulls fans expected him to go but they weren't prepared to pay a fee in face of no opposition for mid season signing. Salfords offer have forced Catalans into offering a fee/swap deal. Probably wont be as good a deal for us financially as salfords offer but, assuming that was whiteheads intended destination all along, he presumably would be amenable to it.

I bet his agent , Andy Clarke is overjoyed .
got his player a release from the Club he seems to have fallen out with
found a club with top 4 ' apsirations ' able to settle Bradfords 100-125K release fee from his 4 years remaining contract.
Given that even NRL Clubs - are baulking at the transfer fees for the likes of Hock -potentially Tomkins class players.
would Bradford sell to another club for less than they could have got from Salford .
They could do a loan to a real 4 top club , if he was wanted. but to Bradford that 100K would have offset the withheld Sky monies & gone some way to funding a replacement / paying for Carvell.

Just read that Whitehead is a possible replacement for Jamil Fakir @ Les Catalan, I wouldn't say no to him for 1 or 2 seasons as he would definately add a bit of grunt to the pack. Not certain on his injury record but have always been impressed with his go forward. Think even at one point many moons ago he was linked with us before when he was younger.

It also states Fakir is considering offers from Wakey and HKR

At this stage in his career I think that Fakir might be another Feka

I find this rlan interesting development and statementrl in addition to what was printed some time ago - back in April and the name of the agent rlHERErl

As long as he hasn't seen the piece on Damien BLANCH riding a Harley in France it may prevent the fat lady from singing.

I did say he was signing for catalans yesterday... but got told I was wrong straight away. The reason I didnt reply back is because I knew 100% that he wasnt going to Salford and had already signed with Catalans

So surely you should have replied then if you were 100%

So you're saying that the Dragons have approached the Bulls and offered some sort of compensation that they may or may not have agreed to. Then, with the Bulls staying strangely silent about the approach and the details of the fee/compensation deal, they have also agreed that the Catalans can talk to the player. Catalans have then approached Whitehead and his agent, negotiated a deal and it's been signed already.

So, the Bulls decision to announce to the planet that they had agreed a transfer fee with Salford was to smoke out the Catalans and deal with them in secret was it? Hmmm, sounds a bit Hans Christian Anderson to me.

If the compensation is in the form of some kind of player swap deal, you can see why they would refrain from announcing it in the same way as we did re the Salford transfer fee.
There is a chance that the Catalans negotiations were ongoing at the same time as the Salford approach, and the Bulls decided to go public with the news of the agreed fee to try and put a bit of pressure on Catalans? Who knows.

It seems to me that we have just been used as a lever for negotiation.