HuddsTigers wrote: ↑28 Apr 2021, 14:17
nottinghamtiger wrote: ↑28 Apr 2021, 10:49
Tamworth Tiger wrote: ↑28 Apr 2021, 08:36
nottinghamtiger wrote: ↑28 Apr 2021, 07:54
dettoriman wrote: ↑27 Apr 2021, 19:56
While he did great work to help turn the club around along with Daryl Powell
The sacking of Zak Hardaker was a very costly move and quite short sighted.
The club had no choice but to dismiss Hardaker.
Anyone suspended by WADA/UKAD cannot have a contract of employment with a sporting organisation, or even a company that is financially connected to a sporting organisation (eg sponsors).
It’s the rules.
So are you saying that we had a legal obligation to dismiss him and make him a free agent with no entitlement to compensation if someone else subsequently offered him a contract? I find that really surprising.
Correct.
“No Person who has been declared Ineligible may, during the period of Ineligibility, participate in any capacity in a Competition or activity (other than authorized anti-doping education or rehabilitation programs) authorized or organized by any Signatory or Signatory's member organization.”
A contract of employment (either at Cas or organised by Cas) inherently involves activity that is authorised and/or organised by the club.
My understanding of these rules is not that he cannot have a contract with the club but he cannot undertake any work in any regard for them. In fact, I think there are examples of players remaining at clubs while banned across all sports. Didn't Rangi stay at Widnes? News article says he was suspended not sacked.
The rules above, in my understanding, mean he cannot be at the club, cannot participate in training, off field activities, undertake promotional work, do any community work such as visit schools as a representative of the club, and obviously cannot play.
Essentially, a club can stand by their player and honour their contract to sit on his/her backside for the duration of their ban/contract until it expires. However, the vast majority don't do this and fire them because it's a waste of money. This results in said player either sucking it up or having to find another job.
Similarly, another club is only likely to start the contract from the moment his ban ends again, so thry don't have have pay him. Didn't Wigan sign Hardaker and then he got a reduced ban that allowed him to return to training earlier and participate in club activities without being able to play before his ban ended?
I guess some if this is true, maybe.
If his 'employment' involved no involvement with the club or any associated sponsors, we could continue to pay his wages and he would remain our 'employee'. Yes, I suppose that the club could have paid him 10k a month (I'm estimating) to sit on his backside for what would, at the time, probably have been two years. As you say, that would have been a waste of money, but I wonder if that decision might have been different if we knew that his suspension would only last for one season? We'd already paid £150k for him, so perhaps we would have stood his wages for a season IF we had known that would be the length of his suspension.
I do think that an argument could be made, though, that a contract of employment inherently has a de facto activity attached to it - the very nature of an employment contract is work activity.
To make it even more complicated, if we had continued to pay Hardaker to sit on his backside and have no involvement with the club, he could probably also claim breach of contract. As above, a contract of employment is inherently linked to activity and an employer who does not provide such activity can be deemed to be in breach of that contract. There have been examples of this, whereby a company simply pays an employee, binding them to an employment contract, to prevent them undertaking work elsewhere but not actually allowing them to undertake work for them. So Harkader wouldn't have necessarily had to 'suck it up' in this situation.
Wigan (or any club) were of course allowed to offer him a contract at any point during his period of ineligibility, as long as that contract did not start prior to the end of his suspension. My understanding is that they actually signed him before his suspension was determined, so his contract would have started on the date that his suspension ended, whatever that may have been. Maybe they thought that they could support him to mitigate his ban, but that was by no means guaranteed.
As per the 'normal' procedures towards the end of a suspension, he was allowed to return to training for a period of time prior to the end of his suspension.
In terms of Rangi, he didn't play for Widnes again after his suspension. I don't know whether he was dismissed or just left by mutual agreement, but I'm pretty sure Widnes would not have continued to pay him during his period of ineligibility.
I can't think of any cases where a player continued to be contracted to a club during a UKAD suspension. Gareth Hock re-signed for Wigan *after* his suspension, but (like Hardaker) he was free to sign anywhere between his suspension and re-signing for Wigan.
