York Knights have found a clever loophole in new transfer rulings which will allow them to access more than the ten overseas quota players permitted in Super League.
The Knights went down to Leeds Rhinos on Friday night, but an interesting name on the teamsheet was King Vuniyayawa. The Fijian was announced as a Newcastle Thunder player in December, after signing for the Championship club ahead of the new campaign.
But on Friday, he was named on the bench for the Knights, who last year created a partnership with Thunder.
York’s squad numbers for the season feature eleven overseas players: Toa Mata’afa, Jordan Lipp, Scott Galeao, Ata Hingano, Jack Martin, Paul Vaughan, Jesse Dee, Xavier Va’a, John Segaga, Nikau Williams and Ryan Jackson.
In that regard, Vuniyayawa would not be permitted to be a part of York’s squad for the season. However, this is where the loophole comes in.
Ahead of the new season, the Rugby Football League scrapped dual-registration and replaced it with a one-week loan system, allowing clubs to send players to another club for one game week before returning to their parent club.
When a player represented another club on dual registration, they would remain on the parent club’s roster. With the loan system, they do not. It means that each week, York, or any club for that matter, can send their overseas players out on loan to another club, and be able to select from others. So while they can only play ten overseas players in any given game, they can have access to more than that week-to-week.
It’s worth noting that Lipp, Segaga and Jackson have all represented Newcastle so far this year and not the Knights.
York are now likely to add to their pool of overseas players with David Nofoaluma set to join the partnership between the Knights and Thunder.
It’s a clever way around the quota rulings, but other clubs will now likely look to pursue it too. One obvious club is Castleford Tigers. While they do receive salary cap dispensation after the injury to Blake Taaffe, they don’t receive quota dispensation, but they now may have found a way around that problem.