You certainly messed up with your negotiations with Jake Connor.

Was thinking something similar.

What an England debut for him. He's turned this match on its head.

Most of us knew it at the time, this was my comment when it was rumoured he was going. What a monumental error of judgement from our management team.

Not often I'm right so I'll enjoy this

One in a series of epic HR foul ups.

Did anyone actually lose their job over it?

God forbid a player would want to leave a club languishing at the bottom of the table and in danger of relegation to go to a challenge cup winning club!
All RTs fault- nowt to do with stone or Connor- pathetic!!!

The club ended up in a position where they had a player on their books who didn’t want to leave but to keep him they would have had to pay a transfer fee to a club he’d never played for.

Paying a transfer fee to keep your own player!

As cock ups go, it was a pretty spectacular one.

They had a player who HAD wanted to leave because of our coach, who was then sacked, but when he changed his mind after he’d gone it was too late as he’d already signed. FC could have acted in a more moral way- but unlike us that’s clearly not the way they do business.
That wasn’t an HR error- it was a Connor error
It was Connor who made those decisions- and Connor who put pen to paper - we cannot force players to make decisions we want them to make.
I bet he’s glad he made it now!

We tried to pay him less than he was worth, can't blame a young lad for wanting to earn to his potential.

Thewles said it was the most we had ever offered such a young player. But that's such a cop out comment, if all the other players had signed for 4 peanuts and we offered jake 5 it doesn't necessarily mean he's been offered a good deal,just a less crap one than the other youngsters.

We then spent probably four times as much on two lesser players in the same mould in Rankin and Gaskell.

Hopefully we've learnt our lesson from this.

Cough kopczak and Mason cough.

The reality is our CEO thought he could get away with it because he thought we were entitled to compensation.

The reality is we were not and whoever was dealing with it at Hull FC was more savvy and clever than ours.

dont see how it was stones fault, connor had already signed the deal when stone arrived!

in hindsight the club should have paid to get him out of the hull deal but history now

We were entitled to compensation.
FC weren’t more savvy - they were more immoral.
If connors birthday has been in, say, March they wouldn’t have been able to do what they did to cheat us out of development money.
But then we know their chairman is a rat.

Sad to say but i don't think Connor would have matured into the player he is now if he had stayed here. He was visibly out of shape here, and just going through the motions. He needed the move to another environment to kick on, as some players do. I am sad that the great talent he has become (and i think he will be an England half for many years) has been lost to us, but i really don't think we would have turned him into the player he is now at Hull. We will however, never know.

some of our youngsters might think they will improve for a different club too

we have signed most up though now

Perhaps not- it’s often horses for courses. Some players thrive more under certain coaches or at certain clubs than others.
Look at ferres- steady at Cas, brilliant for us, poor at Leeds.
Gale- mr ordinary most of his career, blossomed later in life at Cas,