St George Illawarra hasn’t issued a ‘hands off’ warning to the Canterbury Bulldogs when it comes to Dragons captain Ben Hunt, but powerbrokers at the joint venture are very confident their star halfback won’t be going anywhere.
The Bulldogs bosses ramped up the hunt for Hunt earlier this week.
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With Anthony Griffin sacked and Hunt previously suggesting he would “have to reassess” if the Red V board swung the axe, Canterbury’s recruitment team fired into top gear on Tuesday. The plans out of Belmore are to get the 33-year-old Origin game breaker in to work alongside five-eighth Matt Burton, 23, as they roll into a new era.
The Dragons, on the other hand, are having none of it. While there’s been no formal pushback from the club after the Bulldogs started sniffing around, Dragons football boss Ben Haran told members: “I certainly won’t have him go anywhere.”
“Ben’s frustrated,” he then admitted. “We’re all frustrated from the results. You want to win. Ben wants to win. You see the way Ben plays. You don’t play 300 if you don’t care about winning.”
According to Haran, the club has been holding regular talks with Hunt and those within the joint venture would be very surprised if he agitated to leave in 2023.
While other news outlets like News.com.au and The Daily Telegraph have suggested there’s a possibility, The Sporting Base has heard there’s not going to be any real movement from Hunt’s camp.
Hunt is contracted to the Dragons through to the end of 2025 so any move that would see him break away from the Saints would have to come packaged with a momentous carrot for St George Illawarra.
There are upsides to a divorce for the joint venture, including loosening the club’s salary cap by upwards of $1,000,000 over the 2024 and 2025 seasons and allowing Jayden Sullivan to take the number seven jumper as quickly as possible but boasting a player of Hunt’s calibre is always going to be at the top of the ‘keep’ column.
On Canterbury’s side, the chance to poach Hunt—and their early moves—make sense too.
The blue and white outfit has already scored several victories in the transfer market in recent years including bringing in Burton and fellow Panthers Viliame Kikau and Stephen Crichton (2024). Reed Mahoney was another big scalp there too, and plugging Hunt in would and could turn them into premiership hopefuls.
This week, Hunt’s agent reaffirmed he is “there until the end of 2025″ and suggested the Queensland star would just have to wait and let the process unfold, in regards to the new coach.
Right now, Jason Ryles is the favourite to take over the Dragons in 2024.
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