The quote you have from ML was on GMR's RL hour tonight. He also said a lot of other things that to me are quite contradictory.GeoffN posted:There'd never have been a good time for him to go, though, and I suspect he was prevented from talking about it until everything was signed.mrs_carney posted:
It was the wrong time to go and it was a really messy way to go. This is the first time faz has spoken publicly about his move and i for one am glad that he talked about wigan so much and not about union. I hope he does really well and has every success, shame about the timing but well, hopefully his grass will be greener on the other side. Good luck andy
I think the comment from Lindsay was fair enough:
"Considering that Andrew has given this club almost 15 years of his life we felt that we owed him something. Simply insisting that he saw out the remaining 18 months of his contract wasn't the only point that had to be considered. At the end of the day Andrew is a friend of the Club and we had to consider his feelings and ambitions as well as our own. In the end we gave him our support to make the choice himself."
I know DaveO will disagree, though.
While he said that the club could not stand in Farrell's way due to long service he then went on about how RL needs to do something to keep its best players.
He referred to thr RFL's comment very early in the Farrell saga about being happy to let market forces work with some disdain by saying the NRL stepped in when Andrew Johns was off.
He referred to the club GB thing with KFC and Rads as if he thought it should still be there.
He also said he thought long serving players should be excempt from the salary cap and GB players with a certain number of apearances should be also.
As to Farrell he said had he been one year into a five year deal he wold have told the RFU to shove it. How that squares with what he has said about not standing in Farrells way I am not sure.
I think he has lost the plot.
The only way you can keep hold of a player is if they are contracted to you. If at the end of their contract they want away there is nothing you can do about it which is fair enough.
So if he wants to keep top players in the game the answer is simple. Sign them to long term contracts and hold them to their contracts but don't expect excemptions from the salary cap or a resurection of Club GB because it aint going to happen.
I posted the above on RLFANS but I think the point is pretty clear. ML thinks you can dangle the dollar to keep players and clubs should be free to do so outside the salary cap.
I, OTOH, think the only way you can hold onto players is by getting them to sign a long term contract and holding them too it.
To me its just so obvious that is the case. If I am correct them we should have held Farrell to his deal.
So yes Geoff I do disagree but hopefully you can now see why.
Dave
:eusa3: 
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