It seems from today's reporting that Derek isn't planning on releasing any overseas players in order to comply with Super League regulations. Instead whilst he tries to invent stories to get them off quota, he'll loan them out to a parterned team and get around it that way on a two weekly basis.

Whilst I admire his ingenuity, there are doubts creeping in about the legitimacy of this. Who pays the salary for the player who goes on loan for such a short duration? What happens if the player refuses to go or the partnered club gets sick of it and refuses a player, or the paperwork isn't done on time? What if they had a few injuries, would they send a player they would have had in their starting 13 on loan just to comply with the regulations? It's got to be an administrative nightmare from a paperwork, cap and quota perspective? Has a Super League club ever done this before? I thought with a live cap and quota system, you weren't allowed to get into this position in the first place?

I suspect a few clubs might watch how Crazy Derek gets on with this. He could be onto something here.

Strange. Everyone's (especially you) now talking about Leigh Leopards. Bongser feels sure that it hasn't gone under the radar at IMG. Rugby League has needed the apple cart upsetting for a while and if teams sense that the status quo hegemony of the traditional top three in SL could be challenged it can only be good for the game.

Is that why you are "Saddened"?

I think you're a bit off challenging the top 3, but be good if you do. Not that that has any relevance to the post. He has said he's going to get around the quota system by loaning players out to a partner club on a two week basis.

When they do that will they be called the Leigh Cheetah's.

It's just too easy

After St Helens undermined the legitimacy of the disciplinary process to win a grand final it's probably got everyone else thinking of ways to bend or break any rules they can, even when the clubs knew the intent of the rules when they approved them.

Didn't Hull KR try something with de-registering overseas players a few years back?

I think you're forgetting Wigans "breaching the spirit of the cap" way back in 2006, or are all the worlds woes Saints fault these days? Will we find out Liz Truss is McManus long lost cousin?



The reality is clubs will play on the edge of the rules that they think they can get away with. However the operational rules don't leave a whole load of wiggle room;

The "loophole" as it was announced focuses on the 21 man squad, but ignores the club register. I believe the club need to submit their SL register by the 1-December, at which point the RFL will, presumably, reject the 8th submitted non-fed registration.

That wasn't correct, Saints followed process and put in an appeal, the disciplinary came back with a frivolous response to the appeal, so Saints threw it back to them with a further counter appeal with a proven contradiction to the original charge.. The judge had to had to accept the charge was invalid, every man and his dog on here have said the disciplinary panel is not fit for purpose, all Saints had done was to expose disciplinary incompetance.

Saints didn't bend or break any rules once the incident was picked up by the disciplinary, the saints club was very professional in there approach whilst the panel was very amateur.

Your team lost in the grand final against a team who didn’t get out of first gear and a loose forward for St. Helens who was pretty much anonymous anyway. Just get over it and stop being bitter lmao

Meow..

It kind of feels like Derek is trying to do what Wigan used to do in the early days of the salary cap and quota. I.e just refuse to comply with the regulations, stating that he has contracts in place with the players. The longer this goes on the higher the chance is of the powers that be just finding the difficult questions so awkward that they end up allowing Leigh to keep them all. Maybe this will be how the promoted clubs are given a chance, they become exempt from the quota regulations for existing contracts.

Saddened/bellend Where's Steph Curry?

Why not look beyond your obsession with trolling for once? Your owner HAS stated this is how he's planning on dealing with having two too many quota players in the squad for next season. Why can't you just give your opinion on that?

He's more like Den Perry from Phoenix nights, than Joe Exotic

One

Has it been confirmed that Lam is off now? I hadn't seen that.

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.

Most certainly one.