If he breaches his contract and just does one to sarries or wherever and it goes to court as long as we dont get Jim Carey representing us we will get the value of his contract at least.

If Deano G is correct about wigan's weak position in negotitions then theSC hasto be adjusted as a matter of urgency. Other clubs must realise ru will come after Ryan Atkins, Rangi Chase, Foster, Ryan Hall etc. as well as wigan players. If that happens they may as well go to amatuer status. Like Ru was when we took theirbest players, this poaching is as much about killing RL as obtaining players.

Why do you say that? I'm not sure what you mean by the "value of his contract".

Damages are compensation to put the party who has suffered loss in the position they would have been if the contract had been performed (and bear in mind that Wigan will save the 80k a year because they won't be paying it to Joel).

The party who has suffered loss also has a duty to take reasonable steps to mitigate their loss.

Wigan's losses will therefore be the costs involved in finding a new player of similar quality and the difference between any higher salary they have to pay that player and what they would have paid Joel. I suppose if say a sponsor or potential pulled out of sponsoring Wigan because Joel was no longer at the club there might be an argument that there was additional loss, but while that scenario might possibly be relevant to Sam if he moves to RU I can't see it being relevant to Joel.

The courts would simply view this an employment law matter, the fact he is an employee of a RL club is not really relevant. Wigan's damages would be relatively small.

To be honest, I don't think RU raids are the biggest issue in the long term. The erosion of player pay in real terms is the biggest danger for RL - I don't think there will be many top-class players in British RL for RU to poach in 20 years time, the game will have moved down a level or two by then.

RU isn't the biggest threat to RL. The people running the RFL and RL clubs are the biggest threat to RL.

Linked to us? Sweet baby jesus, him and Hock together would make any coach tear their hair out

And then there's the threat from the NRL, as highlighted by this Aussie playerhttp://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/rugby_league/15295811.stmrl

We are at 5 minutes to midnight. Action must be taken now to put the British game on a sustainable growth path, before it is too late (perhaps it already is ).

No, we wouldn't. We wouldn't get £320k because that isn't our loss. It's what we would have paid Tomkins. An employer's loss is the cost to it of finding a new employee. There might be examples where you could point to some other loss flowing from his breach of contract, if for example the player was the star player in the team - I gave the example of a sponsor backing out of a deal because a player was no longer there, but I don't think these would apply to Joel.

The cost of training him is irrelevant. Employers can't claim normal training costs back as far as I am aware.

I think we all expect a deal to be done shortly. RU have oodles of cash and a desperate need to get the player across in a clean and quick way so they will pay a premium over what they would have to pay in litigation but people expecting over 500k are likely to be very disappointed.

There is one thing that might work in Wigan's favour and that is both RU and RL are affiliated to Sport England.

The idea of one affiliated governing body using central funds to facilitate the poaching of a player from another ought to be something the RFL complain about. I am sure RU would say they aren't using any Sport England cash to fund the move but if they have enough cash to fling at our players from central funds they don't need their Sport England grants in the first place. I doubt the RFL would even think of investigating this because quite frankly I doubt they are even remotely interested despite the warnings such as thishttp://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/rugby_league/15295811.stmrl

OK he is on about a drain to the NRL but it highlights the issues. I think it is pretty clear Wigan are doing a great job on marketing with revenues up and so on, great job with the crowd increases and lots of initiatives such the heritage day the "big one" games but the RFL need to get off their backsides and look to strart growing revenue that they can distrubute to club in the same way the RFU so.

We wont get 320k just because thats left on his contract but looking at the situation if it did go to court we could get that figure if represented correctly. I didnt really explain that very well

The training is relevent because its money and time weve invested in that player which would obviously be money burned if he just walked away. You can also play the England international and future potential card.

Apparantley court cases of this kind are different to normal working tribunal cases. Different things are taken into account. I know somebody at another sporting club who has experienced a few of these cases and he said they get very messy and usually the club losing the player can get the value of his remaining contract at least as long as they have the right legal team. He said 90% of time it doesnt get that far though because both sides end up worse off.

FWIW i doubt we will get over 500k either but iw did get that (500k) I would be pretty happy.

Maybe a few things i have said may not apply in this case considering the cases i got told about were in a same sport scenario

Like you've said about the uncertainty of the legal system though, the whole thing would be a minefield. Nobody can say for sure how the case would be viewed or how it would pan out which probably helps us because the RFU are less likely to go down that route unless absolutley necessary.