Hurrell let go by Warriors
Warriors managing director Jim Doyle says it’s unlikely the club will use the space freed up inside the salary cap by Konrad Hurrell’s departure to make a new signing this season.
It was confirmed yesterday that Hurrell has left the club with immediate effect.
The centre, who played just three games this season, was on around $500,000 a season and as the club were close to the ceiling of the $6.8 million cap they have some wriggle room to improve a struggling side.
However, Doyle says with the transfer deadline being the end of next month, they’ll look towards having more money available next year.
‘‘June 30 is coming and what you don’t want to do is rush in to get someone who’s only here for the short term,’’ Doyle said. ‘‘It’s more about who we can get for the long term.’’
While Hurrell’s early departure isn’t something either party envisaged when he signed a new contract last year, which was supposed to keep him at the club until the end of 2018, it’s something that’s the best solution for everyone.
Hurrell gets to start afresh somewhere else and play first grade footy, while the Warriors get a player off their books who was picking up a big salary, but not in contention for selection.
‘‘It’s something we’d been discussing with Konrad and his management for quite some time,’’ Doyle said.
‘‘As we all know, he’s not been getting regular first-team appearances this year. We both felt that for Konrad’s future and that it was beneficial for us, it’s best he finds somewhere else.’’
‘‘We don’t have a player on the roster that’s taking up salary cap space, so we can look to either replace or upgrade some of the younger ones.’’
It is believed the Warriors have reached an agreement to pay Hurrell a figure for a proportion of the left on his contract. That money is included inside the salary cap for this year, but doesn’t have him taking up salary cap space in 2017 and 2018.
While Hurrell’s role at the Warriors had diminished over the past couple of years, he remained a fan favourite and Doyle admitted it’s disappointing that his time at the club ended like it did.
‘‘No doubt Konrad is an extremely well liked player at the club and he’s starred on numerous occasions,’’ Doyle said.
‘‘But as we all know, it’s a football team, it’s a business and we’ve got to take the club to the heights we all want to get to and therefore, when you’ve got a player who for this period of time isn’t getting first team games, we’re better to utilise those funds elsewhere.
‘‘For him, he’s obviously sad, but also knows he wants to be playing in the first grade, rather than the reserves.’’
The Gold Coast Titans are the club most widely tipped to be Hurrell’s next home, but one of his managers, Richard White from Inventus Sports, said they are still finalising the next move and it’s understood the Melbourne Storm are another interested club.
There are firm offers on the table for Hurrell from both rugby codes, but White said they are still finalising what the next step will be.
‘‘He is going through his options at the moment,’’ White said.
It had become clear that Hurrell didn’t feature in coach Andrew McFadden’s plans for first grade footy and because of that, it was time for him to move on.
‘‘Konrad wanted to play first grade,’’ White said.
‘‘We’ve always thought that if he was going to do that, it would have been in the initial rounds of the year. It didn’t happen. That was in the position he wanted to play. So we had this time ring fenced and it worked for the club and it worked for us.’’
‘‘We both felt that for Konrad’s future and that it was beneficial for us, it’s best he finds somewhere else.’’ Jim Doyle, Warriors CEO