Lucrative England move on cards for Lyon
By Greg Prichard
August 15, 2004
The Sun-Herald
Jamie Lyon is considering a mammoth offer to join English glamour club St Helens, whose chairman Eamonn McManus confirmed that the former Parramatta, NSW and Australian centre was at the top of their hit list.
St Helens have emerged as favourites to get Lyon's signature purely because of financial reasons. The English giant can afford to pay a fortune up front, while NRL clubs either don't have much money left under the salary cap or are only prepared to talk incentive deals.
The Sun-Herald understands that St Helens are prepared to pay $500,000 a year for Lyon, who is playing with home-town team Wee Waa in the Group 4 country competition in north-western NSW.
Lyon, who was on $250,000 a season with Parramatta and remains contracted to them until the end of 2006, walked out on the Eels after the first round of this season, citing a dislike of living in Sydney.
He eventually reached an agreement with Parramatta that allowed him to play for Wee Waa and recently it emerged that the Eels were prepared to release him to a non-Sydney club, citing the reason Lyon left Parramatta as justification for those terms.
That ruled out Manly, probably the only NRL club that would splash out to get the chunky star.
Wests Tigers were among the NRL clubs that were interested, but they were not in a position under the salary cap to pay Lyon a great deal for next year and would have had to scale the initial payment down and increase it in subsequent years.
Lyon's uncle and manager, Mick Smith,
is shopping Lyon around to NRL clubs at about $300,000 a season, but any club that signed him would have to pay an additional release fee of $150,000 to Parramatta.
Apart from salary cap concerns, there is a wariness among NRL clubs about Lyon because of the way he left Parramatta and his recent management merry-go-round, which saw Lyon dump Allan Gainey for Smith.
Parramatta are no longer having to pay him and Lyon is understood to be finding it tough to meet mortgage requirements.
St Helens are looking for a centre to replace Martin Gleeson, who was suspended by the English Rugby League for four months for his part in a betting scandal and released by the club.
