SUPER LEAGUE players are still yet to hear from IMG regarding the overhaul of the top flight and all three tiers of professional rugby league, according to Huddersfield Giants prop forward Owen Trout.
IMG signed a 12-year deal with the sport in order to ‘re-imagine’ rugby league as we know it, with the grading criteria set to be released to clubs at the beginning of March.
However, according to the entertainers themselves – the players – they have yet to hear any potential plan in terms of moving forward.
“From IMG themselves I haven’t heard a peep, we don’t really know what the plan is,” Trout said on the Show Me The Money TV Podcast.
“What are they going to bring in that’s changing it. Obviously we need change, everyone knows something needs to change.
“We heard about this IMG contract coming in and the big plan but from a player’s perspective I don’t really know anyone that knows their plan.”
Trout, who is off-contract at the end of the 2023 Super League season after signing a four-year deal back in 2019, believes that players are not etching long-term contracts because they don’t have the faith in rugby league and that stars need to be seen as ‘elite athletes’.
“Back in the day people started signing long-term contracts whereas I feel now it’s not necessarily that the clubs don’t want to give them out, but it’s more so as a player you don’t have that faith in the sport anymore,” Trout continued.
“We need to start being seen as elite athletes, as a sport we seem to be crammed in as just a rugby player. We need to have player profiles pushed out, that’s when the media and Super League can help.
