Out of contract Huddersfield Giants winger Ben Blackmore has joined Featherstone Rovers for an undisclosed fee.
The 21-year-old, who has made just one Super League appearance in 2014, impressed the Rovers while on dual registration duty with Batley Bulldogs, as Giants director Richard Thewlis explained: “Ben played for the Bulldogs at the weekend and impressed his opponents immensely to the point that they felt he could add to both their 2014, 2015 and 2016 teams.
“It would have been unfair for us to stand in his way as we had already determined that we couldn’t offer him a place in our 2015 super league squad. He has a great opportunity to remain full time with an ambitious club at a level where he will get week in week out gametime and am sure will continue to improve.
“Wing is an area that we feel well covered in and whilst you can never have too much depth in all areas salary cap regulations and players desires to play every week sometimes means players and clubs have to part ways when ideally you would want to keep the player on your roster.
“The approach from Featherstone came a little bit out of left field but they are very ambitious to secure some players that can take them to the next level and we look forward to watching Ben play a part in that process. He moves with our very best wishes for the future and thanks for his time in the claret and gold.”
Featherstone Chief Executive Craig Poskitt said: “We’d like to thank Huddersfield Giants for their co-operation in completing the deal quickly. We have admired Ben for a while and were highly impressed with his performance against us for Batley Bulldogs on Sunday where he scored two tries.
“We discussed Ben previously and following his two try performance only two weeks ago on Sky TV against St Helens we made him a target, fortunately we are now in a good position to compete with Super League clubs with Feisal’s recent investment and understand that a number of clubs were interested in Ben, so we acted swiftly with the cheque book.
“Ben is a local lad and I am sure he will fit in at the club quickly. We are now planning ahead and signed Ben until 2016, we have a three-quarter line that will play a major part in our progress. Ben is the fourth Super League player to join us in recent weeks and we expect more signings this week.”
