If Wigan hadn't signed him up, on a long term contract, other clubs would've surely come in for him.
Rather him running with us than against us.

I don't think there is any crime that has ever been committed anywhere where having done the time means that is the end of it because mud sticks and it is just the way of the world. Hock will have this hanging over him for the rest of his career. The point that seems impossible to get across is despite that, giving him a contract of less than five years is not extending punishment beyond his sentence.

You can bet your house on it that if Hock gets a five year deal the headlines will be "Player banned for drugs rewarded with Five year contract".

Does the club want to be associated with headlines like this when it wants parents to place kids in their trust? I don't think it does because it makes the club look soft on drugs but the club can have it's cake and eat it if it handles this sensibly. Which is why despite detail of other contracts not being released they should with this one as it's hardly normal circumstances. By the way by this I mean they don't need to say how much he earns just what rules he must comply to to keep his job.



Clean slate or brushed under the carpet? IMO I think the clean slate is a bit of a utopian ideal. The world just isn't like that and if the club did as I suggested and offered him a deal with future years as options in the clubs favour with numerous conditions he must comply with to keep his shirt, I do not see this as extending his punishment.

At the same time it would show the club have taken him back "on license" if you like - and I don't see anything wrong with sending that kind of message out at all. Just the opposite.

Dave

It looks to me like Wigan have made efforts to look after the lad. As a result him signing is the least he can do really.

3 pages of crap have been deleted.

Quit the accusations, trolling and stay on topic. There will be bans.

Thats the key. If he wants it as an individual, the long break could be the best thing that could have happened to his career. It's up to him though.

Weighing up what we know so far, which is precious little in truth, I think the advantages of having Gareth Hock back on our books would outnumber the disadvantages.

For me, the moral issue expires once Hock has done his time. But that doesn't mean that Wigan wouldn't need to keep a careful check on his actitivities, which I'm sure they would as provisos seem to be IL's style when it comes to issuing contracts.

The supposed five-year thing would surprise me, I must admit. It seems like a lot, but if it's five years on a 'yearly approval' basis, then I don't see the real harm in it. If, for example, at the end of each year, Hock has to tick various boxes in terms of his behaviour in order to activate the next year, that would surely benefit everyone. Hock would have no choice but to stay on the straight and narrow, which would do him no harm at all. And Wigan would have an annual get-out clause if there were any problems. At the same time, they'd be seen as having imposed a form of parole on Hock - an extra little punishment, if you like, to indicate both to him and neutral observers that all has not yet been forgiven and that trust has to be re-earned.

Whether this would happen or not, I don't know. But in that respect I don't think a five-year deal would be as big a disaster as some fear. The alternative would be to offer him a shorter-term deal, also with parole-type provisos attached, and then watch him accept a better deal from someone else.

I think that's the brutal reality of it. To see the Wigan club subjected to taunts on message boards, and maybe even in the press, about being kind to drug-users would not be as painful to me as seeing Gareth Hock turning out against us in a Warrington or St Helens shirt.