Why would he randomly leave half way through the season. If he's signed it will be for next year onwards.

Now or never for Clark unfortunately which is why I think he’ll go.

Hope we have a first refusal on him when he decides to come home.

So you think he is going this season?

It is interesting this 'he's earned the right to go early - be that now, the end of the year or end of his contract.
I don't disagree, but if you compare that to - say - football where very rarely do they go until a year before the contract ends so that the footy club can cash in.
Very rarely are they 'frozen out' because they are a disruptive influence or because they won't play and are just prepared to sit it out. (OK there are a few instances, but not many).

Who has it right?
In football I guess money talks very loudly given 2nd or 3rd rate players can go for millions and demand multi year million pound salaries.
Just think what the likes of Pele, George Best or Gordon Banks would be worth in their prime these days.....

Pele? Was he the bloke who played inside Green Vigo for Wigan a few years back?

In football there's a global market with a huge number of potential buyers so you can always sell a player if you want to. In RL there are a handful of clubs that have the finances to be able to make a deal and often they won't have that positional need, so players don't have the same asset value.

If this was football we'd resign Clark on a 4 year deal worth £300k a week and then after a year sell him to Real Madrid for £125m.

I still don’t think he’ll leave though. He extended his contract last time when all the speculation was he was leaving for Australia.

In my personal opinion I’d be pleasantly surprised if he was a Wire player next season but that’s just my opinion, not based on anything I’ve heard as I’ve literally heard nothing.

I’m just looking at it from his point of you. He’s literally only become a father and therefore the child won’t start school for 3/4 years, he’s 28 (will probably be his last opportunity) so therefore he could go over to the NRL for 2/3 years make a lot of cash, experience a different culture, test himself on the biggest stage and then return home.

It is probably fair to say the there is a lot of moving parts to the retention or recruitment in our main pivot positions for next year.
Lots of questions
Q. Is Austin going. And is Ratchfords move back into the halves a prelude to next year with the double edged sword being we have 2 decent young full backs.
Q. Is Widdop going to be offered an NRL contract
Q. Is Powell keeping an eye on Riley Dean at York and would he be ready for a starting spot next year.
A lot of the answers to those questions will dictate if we can compete with any NRL clubs who are interested in D Clark.

Reading between the lines the club has realised that they didn't want to extend Austin contract and have 2 decent young fullbacks at the club so want to try Ratch as a full time half back.
That in itself should release one marquee position.

Personally i would let Austin and Widdop both go. With the cash remaining, either sign Trueman or just play Stef and Dean in the Halves. Id like us to utilize the youth more and that would then free up Ashton as starting FB. Austin has done nothing for months and his sidestep as been so clearly foreseen by the rest of super league. Widdop has been playing well buts he's been open about homesick and seeing his family - just let the lad go.

Clark will probably leave and he deserves a crack at the NRL, hate losing him though.

Listening to Talksport2 earlier (who seem to have a renewed interest in RL) and they mentioned as part of a sports news bulletin that they expect an announcement soon that Daryl Clark has signed a two year contract with Gold Coast Titans. If that's right then at least it rules out him leaving this season.

Austin is a lovely fella to talk with and does a lot of things you don’t hear about in the community. He does it without wanting ‘look at me’ attention. However, has he returned a show for £1m of salary during his tenure. No I have to say.
Yep I know not Clark but all the threads are growing a root system at the mo.
Good that we’ve so much to talk about. Following on from Deus Dat Incr post.

How do you know he does them then?

He said YOU don’t hear about them,

Just small things he does, visits dropping shirts and taking community rugby sessions.

Those sessions that he quietly plasters all over social media and each child gets a t shirt with his face on it?

is this the community rugby sessions that he started then by week 3 it looked like (to a cynical eye) he had goodwin and clark running for him?

Akouala does a load of stuff charity wise, he was helping out with all the food bank stuff last year, he's religious though, and on a hell of a lot less money than austin.

aye, team austin

Do we really pay him that much though, RD?

I agree he's not been a good return on investment since the second half of 2019. And I say that with a heavy heart for the reasons you stated. I hope he gets a decent gig as a super sub in the NRL. Moving forward I think we need a consistent young British half-back, and hopefully Powell has that person in mind.

Somewhere over £300k per season.

Ouch. No wonder Powell was brought in. The board probably think he can get three or four decent young British players producing the goods for that money.

Unfortunately that’s a completely different discussion because paying British players more money doesn’t mean you will get stellar performances. I know RD will disagree but if you pay Dec P £1,000,000 you would not get anything different from him. Austin clearly hasn’t been value for money overall but just about every signing carries a risk of not working out. Some start off like a house on fire others get called fit to burn and then improve massively like Matt King and M Monaghan, no real way of knowing in advance which you will get.

i look back at that season 2008, and think 2 things, 1, there was far too much expectation put on 3 of the 4 incoming players, we expected them to elevate us to a higher level, the australian international (who as quite rightly pointed out at the time, wasn't a gleeson style centre we were trying to use him as) so there was a lot of pressure on king and monas, slightly less on Landerson, and zero on spider who was an unknown to anyone that didn't play fantasy nrl at the time.

Point B, that whole season was ed . The weather was terrible that year, the pitch was awful from a combination of the weather and liverpool reserves cocking it up. And we had the terrible conditioner that year that resulted in a ridiculous amount of torn calf muscles, and 2 (i think) torn achilles very early on (Reardon and bridge)

It was just cursed from the off.

And that bloody shirt as well, with the neck hole that was too tight.

What I meant was that the board probably saw Powell as a guy who can get 3-4 young players on 75k each whose overall contribution to the team will have more of an effect than 300k on Austin. Not many UK players are worth the marquee money and even then they can fail despite prospering at a previous club. However, there are a few such as Clark.