You can't force a player to decide. If the player had said no I'm off to union before the season then that would have been that, and employer can only do so much. In the end it's down to the employee to make a choice about their own fate, unless they do something that is a sackable offence.
Saints did not put into the press that he was looking for another club, Saints did not tout him to Sale and Bath publicly during the start of the season. Saints did not throw him onto TV after the move and Saints did not make him play rotton.
Saying don't play him when he was our first choice 7 was just not an option, just like when he decided not to play, it has not been an option to play him. I always thought he would come back after the Easter break, but lets not try to rewrite history. For me the clubs issues with the Eastmond saga go back much further.
We told Long to go and Smith to go and then tried to renegotiate with Eastmond when he was the last halfback standing. Sorry but you negotiate from a full hand of halfbacks, once Long was gone and Smith was gone, Eastmond knew he was the only guy left and could basically name his contract, before he had even had a long run at 7 for Saints. Had we not shown the door to Long and Smith who knows we could have played Eastmond to sign longer term than just 2 years and all this may never have occured.
But in the end it did and there is no point crying over it, Eastmond is a union player and no amount of blame switching will change that.
