The NRL initially suspended the quintet’s registrations last Tuesday, indicating it plans to cancel them, when it handed down its provisional sanctions over the Eels salary cap scandal on Friday, before the five men successfully sought an injunction hours later.
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The inevitable retirement of injury-struck forward Watmough will help that process, but the Eels are likely to have to jettison at least one more player as part of the deal.
They say they club is not over the salary cap and want a chance to respond to breaches dating back to 2013, totalling more than $3 million dollars.
“The club’s very confident we can get to where we need to be for this weekend”, he told reporters. “He has done an injury that has cost him his career, we are just hoping that can get sorted sooner rather than later and hopefully that is all that needs to happen”.
A medical report from Eels chief medical officer Dr Louis Shidiak concludes that Watmough is “unlikely to be able to return to full capacity as a professional rugby league player”.
The former worldwide, who has not been able to play this season because of a chronic knee complaint, has been trying to rehabilitate the injury to get back on the field.
Rival teams remain sceptical about the removal of a large chunk of Watmough’s deal from the Eels’ cap, believing it sets a risky precedent. The exit of Morgan to Melbourne allows Parramatta to include about half his $140,000 contract, leaving the club to erase $55,000 from its roster.
The Eels will face the Rabbitohs at 9.50pm Friday.
“The club can accrue points while the breach process is ongoing but the NRL will determine whether those points are retained in its final determination”.
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Parramatta board members were, meanwhile, meeting on Monday after an agreement was reached between the NRL and lawyers for Sharp, Boulous, Anderson, Issa and Serrao for the injunction against the suspensions to be dissolved in court.
