Why would we have to pay anything if he’s breached his contract? I can’t see any circumstances at all where we’d have to pay him if he’s walked out on the club as is reported.

He won’t get a penny surely if he’s just walked away?! It smacked all off season of a player who didn’t want to be here but also couldn’t afford to walk away from a good contract.

If a trip home has tempted him to do that then the benefits of this trip to the club just got even more substantial!

Oh I’ll bet somewhere in the small print there’s a clause for just this sort of thing,not saying I know but any agent worth their salt covers any eventuality surely?

Can’t see it being as easy as just ripping his contract up and paying him nowt,life isn’t like that,but of course Wigan should hold his registration which is a handy bargaining chip to have.

As said I’ll bet there’s talks happening and have been happening since last week.

Sorry hengirl, I can’t agree. There’s no way Ian Lenegan or Kris Rad would be taken for mugs. An agent will do their best for their player but a clause like you mention would never be agreed by any businessman.
‘If the player decides to walk away from this contract without permission, with 2 years remaining on said contract remaining, then the club must compensate the player financially.’

Sorry but I just can’t see it matey.

I highly doubt that. IL is a smart business man, I hardly believe he’d allow for a clause saying at any time should FPN decide to leave Wigan we will pay him.

If he’s just not returned home, that’s his prerogative. I for one am glad to see him go, not a terrible player but didn’t live up to the hype and understood he was taking quite a wedge.

Add him to the long list of NRL rejects. Glad he’s gone to be honest.

No great loss on the face of it, looking a little short on numbers should we get a couple of injuries.

If Navarette and/or Hamlin can step up, then hopefully a big chunk of the salary cap without losing anything on the pitch.

Says on Twitter (Phil Wilkinson) it's confirmed that he's left.

Confirmed by the club now. No great loss but so frustrating that he's done it now rather than months ago when we could more easily get a replacement. Not sure what the cap implications are given that he did play an SL game this season.

Pretty much my thoughts. After Pettybourne and Hauraki I was hoping for a proper import with talent and aggression. He just never seemed settled and never at his best.

Good luck to the guy, no animosity. He and the club move on and we have some cap space should the need arise.

Maybe expect a ZH announcement?

Can't say he'll be missed.

All the impact of a ping-pong ball, more often than not and at 31, he's not going to get any better, I wouldn't have thought.

Just hope we can bring someone in - Preferably a specialist right centre, and absolutley NOT Hardaker for me (should be banned for 2 years).

Slim chance we’ll bring someone new in now. Suspect we’ll bank the spare cash in case we have yet another injury crisis and need to bring someone in mid-season. Just hope it’s not on the level of Larne Patrick or Andy Powell.

Whilst he may not have delivered what we all hoped for, I think he’s had more stick than he deserved. Don’t forget that when we suffered the major injury crisis last season, FPN was an ever present in a very often inexperienced side. His performances were steady if not spectacular and I wish him and his family well.

I only hope we use the cap space well and maybe offer half of it to Bateman!!

If you are a top earner and don't perform then criticism is I feel almost inevitable. He may have played on a regular basis but he never really turned up. His missus telling everyone that wanted to listen or even if they didn't that she couldn't stand Wigan only fuelled resentment amongst many fans.
I just thought that he was pretty useless and for the size of the guy a little embarrassing with ball in hand. As you say though good luck to him and his family as you wouldn't want any ill luck to fall on anyone.

Re Bateman I partly share your sentiments however, if he is determined to go then let the lad go.

May sound harsh but I'll be happy when he's gone. Ending this 'will he won't he go' boring saga.

We have depth in the props, his cap space can be used to better effect elsewhere.

Bye bye Frank you ever-present plodder.

I have to say the criticism has been OTT, I am pleased and no doubt so is he that he’s gone. I have a wife and kids and can’t imagine living on the opposite side of the world to them. There’s no doubt that would have affected his performances.

Has FPN played in SL this season?

Yes

So his full wage for this season counts on the cap then?

The way I understand it I think that's the case unless he signs for someone else.

For instance, if we were paying him £100K and then he signed for Castleford and they paid him £50K, then £50K would still count on our cap.
I'm not sure how it works if he moves to the NRL though.

TBH it wouldn't matter whether he had played or not, as he is in the top 25 earners, so counts automatically.



However, we may only need to declare the wages actually paid to FPN, meaning that if we have released him with no further payment, we should only need to declare the amount paid this year to date (I think) - The declaration of the whole year's wages was to stop players being registered/de-registered or moving to a coaching capacity to get them off the SC.

Additionally, even if we did have to declare a year's worth of wages (which I doubt), we can ask to go over the cap under section 3.1.1 (d), which states



So to my mind, either we only need to declare the value of actual payments made to FPN (1.5 months out of 12), or we declare the lot, but request dispensation to go over the cap by 10.5/12 months, due to the player leaving.

(If anyone's interested/sad enough and can interpret the rules better than I can, take a look at [urlhttp://www.rugby-league.com/operational-rules-2018/#p=265[/url)

I agree and I thought he had positive impact at the end of 2016 and made a significant contribution to winning the GF. I was looking forward to a big season from him in 2017 but for whatever reason he went backwards and it didn't work out.

That’s the story of his career.

Bags of potential, bags of hype, but always after a good start seen his form slip off.

No

I'm not the best at explain this but it basically splits into12 monthly payments.
Once he has been released then his monthly wage is released assuming we haven't agreed to either pay it in full or part of.

I know this isn't exact but say salary cap was 2.4million then we can pay out 200k per month. If FPN was on 20k pwr month (240k per year) and he left with wigan not paying anymore then we can pay out 20k per month more to players.

Daveo explained this very well once on a previous thread.

Its to stop teams say spending 400k in the first 4 months of the season then going buying all the top players half way through and paying 2million in the back half of year.
Hope that makes sense.