Ponga leaving media speculation

Les Misérables said:
The club either wants Ponga to stay or to go. There's no in between.

If the club wants him, it makes it extraordinarily difficult for him to be having meaningful conversations with other NRL clubs. Yes, Ponga may turnaround tomorrow and request a release 'on compassionate grounds' following which contract terms will suspiciously and immediately emerge, but for a player of his calibre and attention, the player would need to really want to leave for a scenario like this to be realistic. Otherwise competing clubs risk being caught making unsolicited advances towards a core asset of another club. For all the talk about it, an affair of that magnitude rarely takes place. Anyone have examples of this happening?

The only realistic scenario is one where the club has informally and discretely granted permission to Ponga to speak (off the record) to other clubs. But why the **** would POS, Holbrook or the board want Ponga playing elsewhere? We now have a well balanced squad around our key man, the club needs the player now more than ever imo because we now have the nucleus of a squad that may enter a prem window if the stars align over the next 3-4 years.

No club can pay him more than we will. So if he goes it'll be for the prospect of immediate success. The Roosters have Teddy at 1. That leaves The Dogs? Who else has the money and the position available? And the dogs dont have the money, yet.
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As you mentioned you would think now more than ever it’s in the club interest keep Ponga. But the club secretly allowing Ponga to have talks with other clubs makes some sense. I’ve heard talk the Dogs want to let Burton go.
 
MBQLD said:
I’ve actually blocked FOX news, FOX sports, the daily telegraph and the free to air news channels from my social media and life is much better now.
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Me too on YouTube and instagram, which is all I use. When the knights are in the news I do occasionally look up the fox sports youtube to say what they’re saying on 365 … watch two minutes, lose the will to live and turn it off lol.

Once you break the habit you realise how nuts it is.
 
jamesgould said:
Me too on YouTube and instagram, which is all I use. When the knights are in the news I do occasionally look up the fox sports youtube to say what they’re saying on 365 … watch two minutes, lose the will to live and turn it off lol.

Once you break the habit you realise how nuts it is.
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And you are right it’s a habit. People get just as hooked on the horrors of life as they do the good things and it’s all mentally draining and very unhealthy. We can only control most of what happens in our own lives and bugger all of anything that happens outside of it.

It used to annoy me the saying years ago but I’ve come to appreciate “ignorance is bliss.”
 
frankLauda said:
As you mentioned you would think now more than ever it’s in the club interest keep Ponga. But the club secretly allowing Ponga to have talks with other clubs makes some sense. I’ve heard talk the Dogs want to let Burton go.
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That said, if that were the case, there'd be reporting on that. We've heard nothing like that.

And neither have we had Gould blow smoke up Ponga's arse.

I dont think there is smoke, so its even less likely that there is fire. It seems to be media speculation based on what they anticipate should occur given we just won the spoon. And hey, they might turn out to be right, but as it stands, there's actually very little evidence to warrant concern.
 
The bottom line is he can't talk to anyone unless the club wants him to look around.

Chances are it's all just clickbait stories for the off season - but if the club wants him to go, they will have a plan - they wouldn't just randomly give our top player a hall pass if Gus comes knocking.
 
Reporters are just trying hoping the more times they say it eventually they will get it right.

To be fair the whole contract “rules” the nrl have are laughable, I mean they need actual evidence of contract talks going on, what’s stopping Ponga and Gould texting? Meeting for lunch? It’s not like they can say “you were meeting with Gus we are fining you” as he could just say he was having some lunch with him.

There is so many ways to go around the league contract rules it isn’t funny, it’s not like they are the police and can monitor texts and all that.

People hiding behind “the nrl has rules” is laughable and incredibly naive, Ponga could easily just text Gould to get things sorted, delete the texts and a few months later he suddenly wants a release with no trail.
 
KPGreatness said:
Reporters are just trying hoping the more times they say it eventually they will get it right.

To be fair the whole contract “rules” the nrl have are laughable, I mean they need actual evidence of contract talks going on, what’s stopping Ponga and Gould texting? Meeting for lunch? It’s not like they can say “you were meeting with Gus we are fining you” as he could just say he was having some lunch with him.

There is so many ways to go around the league contract rules it isn’t funny, it’s not like they are the police and can monitor texts and all that.

People hiding behind “the nrl has rules” is laughable and incredibly naive, Ponga could easily just text Gould to get things sorted, delete the texts and a few months later he suddenly wants a release with no trail.
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If Gould is as corrupt as you think, he's at least smart enough to not have it published in all the papers.
 
Its also inherently risky for both parties.

If Ponga were to text Gould or anyone else, who's to say the phone receiving those texts isnt accessible by girlfriends, wives, sons, daughters, friends or colleagues at that time? If I were Ponga I'd be putting nothing in writing.

I'm not saying it isnt possible or it cant happen, it obviously can, but the things that necessitate informal contract discussions with other clubs usually come in a form that produces evidence, such as Gould publicly glazing Galvin for 6 months which is tantamount to an invitation. Also worth noting that Glavin had publicly stated that he wanted a release leading up to all that - more evidence.

There's absolutely zero smoke atm. And if I'm Ponga, I'm not leaving now, Ive finally got a good halves combo, I'm sussing 2026 at the very least before risking tainting my position within the club ive spent 7 years of my life at
 
The NRL can't enforce their own rules.

No chance clubs and player managers aren't flaunting them. Salary cap is a joke, anti tampering the same.

How many times we heard the NRL crapping on about stopping players leaving clubs early and signing with another. Nothing ever happens as they can't stop it. Anti tampering lol, compassionate leave and off they go suddenly signing for a club 1 week later, playing for them the next week.

That takes time to sort out negotiations, contracts drawn up, meeting to sign them etc.

On Ponga it's just click bait, they run fairly routing Ponga not happy, Ponga linked with union, Ponga wants to play for the all blacks, Ponga going to the Roosters blah blah blah.
 
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