A small fee is payable because of his age. As a club trained player, there is a fee for the previous "development" done by the club. He is a free agent so no transfer fee is payable - but the development fee will be. That's £115 per week of training plus £5k if we pay him more than £25k per annum. So if he signed at 17 on pro terms, that's 5 years development so around £35k fee - that's pre defined providing he was offered a contract by Huddersfield that was as good or better than his previous deal.

If he turns 22 before his contract expires (or before 1st December) - then there is no development fee required or if he signs after 1st December the fee isn't payable.

He would also be classed as a free agent, so no transfer fee can be demanded.

I suspect that he may have signed a pre-contract agreement that fairly tight. McRae used that approach to sign Swain many moons ago.

thanks for that sidestep

An honest appraisal of the Jake Connor affair is I believe he has probably approached you and you have done a smart piece of business.

However he will be no more loyal to you than us so I suspect the outcome will be down to your management of him and whether he becomes a regular or not.

As a player he still has great potential but needs a settled place in a side to move forward.

Upside is he has a good eye for the line, is very strong has a bit of mongrel about him and potential to develop.

Downside is he hasn't got genuine blazing pace, gives away silly penalties and misses tackles he should make.

Overall he's a good investment for you if you can create the right environment to improve him.

Sorry, have we resolved the casting off of the pedigree-less Connor yet? Might have missed it.

Conspicuous by his absence is old Bumpy. He didn't respond to my post or to the quote from Thewlis (the Hudds MD) saying how they tried to keep Connor.

Typical of him unfortunately. Writes a load of negative nonsense; attracts the challenge his nonsense deserves; b!tches & moans about the replies he gets; gets put right by other posters; does a disappearing act. The sad thing is, I think he has a point worthy of discussion re our youth coming through. He just puts it across in a terribly negative way that people don't want to engage.

More likely the case that his agent has has been in touch with the vast majority of clubs to make awareness of his availability.

Loyalty is a lost concept. Its a nice idea but the reality is RL is a money earning career where players are commodities and they often go for the most lucrative place of work, certainly in the middle parts of their careers.

Loyalty not really an issue providing you do not breach contract. Its if he is any good that matters.

We offered him very good terms- you offered a little more. Both amounts a lot of money for a 21 year old utility player. Hull are attempting to sidestep the development fee by claiming theyve not signed him but have agreed a deal-i would imagine the RFL will intervene and a compromise will be made.

Our clubs haven't had many dealings over the last few years, there was the potential naughton deal that FC backed out of earlier in the year but I can't think of many others. I wonder if there is still animosity between Pearson and Davy over Huddersfield town.

That's a better post without the rubbish.

I don't blame for trying not to pay, most rugby teams don't have much money, so have to do what they can to get the best deal, even if it is a bit unethical. Hudds are past masters at getting players when teams are on the down, done it plenty of times to Wakey over the last few years.

Oh we've had it done to us plenty of times especially in the bad old days. Hetherington proper screwed us over with Keith senior. Bradford tried it with both Eorl and Paul Reilly but both decided loyalty was worth more than a few extra k.
Still don't think either club have done themselves any favours over the last week with how they've conducted themselves.
It will be interesting to see where Connor features. 50k is the rumoured amount you are paying him next year which suggests he's going to be playing regularly.

And of course your club would never dream of doing it to anybody else would they, it's a pity some of our players didn't show the same loyalty every time Shudds kept calling offering more money.