I despair, Cruncher, I really do. I can see a future for the sport where we aren't even losing our best young players in 20 years' time to RU because they aren't even getting involved in the sport in the first place.

We may well end up with a third rate sport whose semi-pro players aren't good enough to make RU clubs want them. What a dismal future that would be. That is where we are heading.

Joel Tomkins contract at Wigan for next year is not £80k. The structure of the long term contracts awarded by Wigan sees such players as the Tomkins, Mossop and Goulding receive massive pay increments going forward. Hence the loss of Hoffman, Deacon, Coley, etc being replaced by Dudson, Flower and Luakai.

What do call massive?

Good question. I was also puzzled by the implication Deacon would be on a big package... and that we aren't going to be making any more expensive signings...

Looks like a wire troll on the wind up to me.

50% would be considered a "massive" increment in my opinion. Do you agree?

It's not a new suggestion that Wigan are tight on the cap because of contractual increments awarded to players on long term deals.

This is a point I have made several times.



A very good point. I think the idea that if the Joel thing ended up in court this would mean Wigan would end up with less money than say accepting a fee of only £250K is wide of the mark.



It is my understanding that all the players on long term deals at Wigan have increments on their contracts already agreed. I heard this ages ago when people first started speculating about recruitment for 2012. That isn't to say they could not be awarded more money if the club had the room under the cap and wanted to do so.

Can you just explain how a deal between Harris and Leeds relating to what would happen if he returned to SL and him signing for Bradford instead of Leeds is relevant to the situation here, which involves a player leaving SL. An obvious point is that if the Bulls wanted him they would have to pay Leeds a transfer fee under RL rules. Clearly that doesn't apply here.

Does anyone even know what was paid out to Leeds?

Harris was reputed to be on a big salary I seem to recall (200k?) so you'd expect the compensation to be bigger than in relation to Joel, even without the transfer fee angle.

I think its relevant on the basis that you shouldn't underestimate a court's willingness to treat reasonably highly-paid sports stars somewhat differently to your average punter. Chris Caisley (a lawyer of all things) seriously misread the ability to enforce employment contracts with respect to I Harris. I'm not saying the issue is the same but Caisley obviously thought the court would see the 'deal' between Harris and Leeds as restraint of trade and ignore it. They didn't and it cost a lot more than Leeds would have settled for before the case went to court (not to mention costs).

It's not relevant at all. There is clearly no restraint of trade involved in a player agreeing to give first refusal to a club in the event he wants to return to SL in return for that club agreeing to release him to join an RU club. If that's what Caisley thought then it's no wonder the court didn't agree!

I'm not sure what you mean by a court's willingness to treat sports stars differently. The rules on damages aren't differently applied for sports stars than for other people.

In the event that there is a breach of contract and the innocent party doesn't suffer any loss they only get nominal damages (say £1 or £10).

If they suffer loss that is caused by the breach then they get compensated for that loss.

Clauses in contracts that try to allow a party to recover more than their real losses in the event of breach are usually struck down by the courts as being void penalty clauses. They have to be a reasonable pre-estimate of loss. The courts are not keen on people over-recovering on their losses, and the fact that the party in breach is say a premiership footballer doesn't mean the courts will turn a blind eye to a penalty clause.

I understand the desire for Wigan to get more compensation (it would be great if we could) but I've been saying all along that the club is in a weak position and the press reports seem now to bear out that IL is aware of this.

I would say it's almost a certainty that is the case. Saints fans used to get frustrated when we didnt replace 1st team players like for like each year but if your bringing kids through and they are successful like for like replacements is near impossible

Eh? I was responding to the comment you posted, not Dave's. You may have copied and pasted PART of the text of your post from a BrisbaneRhino post that Dave also quoted (though without amendment) but it was still your post that I was responding to (and you seem to have added the assertion that the Harris case was "relevant"icon_wink.gif.

Having said that, it doesn't matter who said that it is relevant, because it isn't.