Rugby League: Tribunal Likely to Settle Dispute Over Cooke's Move to Rovers

Paul Cooke yesterday confirmed his desire to follow in the footsteps of Hull rugby league luminaries such as Clive Sullivan, Johnny Whiteley and Colin Hutton by crossing the city's great divide from west to east to join Hull Kingston Rovers, the club he supported as a boy.

However Cooke's hopes of making his Rovers debut against Huddersfield on Friday will almost certainly be scuppered, with the Rugby Football League stating last night that it would refuse to accept the stand-off's registration with the Robins until he secures a release from Hull FC, either through negotiations or, more likely, a tribunal.

An RFL spokesman said any case could not be heard until next Monday at the earliest, setting up the delicious possibility of Cooke being cleared to play for Hull KR against Hull FC on Saturday week in one of the six Super League derbies that are being staged at Cardiff's Millennium Stadium over the Bank Holiday weekend.

On a day of events as unpredictable as they were fast-moving, an initial announcement on the Hull FC website warning Rovers of legal action if they approached Cooke was quickly followed by confirmation that the England stand-off had handed in his notice.

Hull KR then announced on their website that they had agreed a contract until 2010 with the 26-year-old on the basis that he is a free agent, and Cooke issued a statement claiming that he had never signed the three-year deal he was reported to have agreed with Hull FC in 2005.

That uncertainty will presumably form the crux of the expected tribunal, as it will determine whether Cooke can indeed cross the River Hull as a free agent or whether Hull FC can demand a transfer fee. However Hull FC are already thought to be planning for a future without Cooke, who has been with them since signing from the East Hull amateur club in 1998, and scored the match-winning try in their Challenge Cup final victory against Leeds at the Millennium Stadium in 2005.

Their coach Peter Sharp has already confirmed that the club are keen to sign Brent Sherwin, an experienced Australian scrum-half currently out of favour with the Canterbury Bulldogs. But Hull FC's directors are also understood to have money available for other major signings in an effort to appease their supporters should they lose Cooke to the old enemy.

Cooke's statement included thanks to the Hull supporters, hoping "they will respect the decision that I have made". In the short-term that is optimistic but the examples of Whiteley, Hutton and Sullivan show he may be forgiven eventually.

Hull FC supporters were stunned and angry when each of them moved east towards the end of their careers - to coach Rovers, in the cases of Whiteley and Hutton, while Sullivan followed almost 250 tries for the black and whites between 1962 and 1974, still a club record, with another 118 in five years with the Robins. But the great Welsh wing was welcomed back to Hull FC for a swansong season and shortly after he died at the age of 42 in 1985, the main road linking the two sides of the city was renamed Clive Sullivan Way.

Elsewehere Swinton insisted that their recent move into administration is no threat to their long-term future, St Helens confirmed the departure of their chief executive Sean McGuire and Barrow police revealed that a 19-year-old man has been arrested and bailed for alleged assault occasioning actual bodily harm in relation to an incident on April 15-16 that forced Saints' Ade Gardner to miss last Saturday's game at Leeds with an eye injury.