This is what really hurts our sport, I am not a conspiracy theorist and the majority of things we have to do to protect our future are our own:
But when things like this happen and whoever is considering it at the moment, the competition operating rules and any exceptions have to be sanctioned by the governing body, so ultimately, this is likely to be ratified formally by SLE/RFL.
Essentially, we were burned into forcing Hendo from the club with rule changes, only for exceptions to be granted, as a previous poster pointed out, there was no leniency or support when we signed Tony Martin and that hurt us in PR and financially, so it does beg the question would Wakey, us, Salford...... etc get any breaks? I doubt it.
There are precidents in competition rules - for instance you can only be signed by 3 pro-football clubs in a season, so Sol Campbell when he left Notts County I think it was in February or March, he was essentially watching loose women until the season ended becuase he had already been signed by 3 clubs or something - so other sports manage to have rules and stick to them.