National Rugby League side Canterbury CEO Raelene Castle believes players should be forced to "personally pay a financial penalty if they break contracts," according to Adrian Proszenko of the SYDNEY MORNING HERALD. The "controversial round 13 rule is again in the spotlight" amid speculation Manly halfback Daly Cherry-Evans is "considering reneging on a four-year, multi-million dollar agreement to join the Gold Coast Titans." No club has been "more affected than Canterbury." The "Family Club" signed the Mata'utia brothers -- Kangaroos representative Sione, Chanel and Pat -- "on a deal believed to be worth" about A$3.7M ($2.88M) over four years. However, the trio "recently decided to stay put after Newcastle countered with a lucrative offer" of its own. Speaking "generally about the signing system," Castle said that players "had to pay a consequence whenever they broke their contractual obligations." She said, "I think there should be a standard break clause in all contracts so that if a player wants to exit the contract early then there's an amount they have to give back to the club. They should have to pay out of the contract they have broken. Maybe [the right figure] is 10 percent" (SMH, 4/22). In Sydney, Honeysett & Read reported Sam Ayoub, the player agent caught up in Wests Tigers player James Tedesco's backflip last year, has "welcomed plans to scrap the round-13 player contract rule but believes the NRL should still keep a cooling-off period as long as it is limited to five days." Ayoub: "To be honest, I hate it and I've been an advocate of scrapping it for quite some time. It
clearly does nothing but create negativity -- negativity in a player's
mind, negativity in his own club's mind because they always know they
can fall back on that, and negativity by encouraging you to breach your
word" (THE AUSTRALIAN, 4/23).
