CM Punk wrote:Didn't Hull KR try something with de-registering overseas players a few years back?
It was more complicated back then because overseas quota and non-fed trained co-existed.
When we signed Willie Mason we needed to get somebody off quota. Mason was entitled to a Tongan passport but couldn’t get it because Tonga was having a massive constitutional crisis and the government wasn’t functioning. Ben Galea had also tried to get a Maltese passport but couldn’t for some reason - maybe one generation too far removed or something like that. We’d made a big song and dance about signing Mason and were desperate to get him over, so asked for a dispensation (he was, after all, entitled to that Tongan passport). That was a ‘no’ and instead of going with that simple solution, we were allowed to temporarily de-register Michael Dobson when he got injured - there was normally and maybe still is a rule against ‘carouselling’ overseas players to avoid the limit on their numbers. The hope being that Mason’s Tongan passport would come through while Dobson recuperated, which proved moot because Mason sodded off to French RU very briefly and then back to Aus.
Interestingly (to me), the rule against carouselling applied specifically to overseas players. Suggesting that fed-trained players could be de- and re-registered at any time. For a long time I assumed that the wealthy SL clubs were likely using that as a within the rules if not the spirit cap-dodging tactic, but I could never confirm it.
