WHEN on June 11 it was announced that Tongan rugby league player Willie Manu would move from Hull FC to St Helens for the 2013 Super League season it produced a seismic shift at one club – Huddersfield Giants.

Up to that point Giants fans seemed to be giving Nathan Brown the benefit of the doubt as to his commitment to the cause, but once it was revealed that the head coach – who had announced two months before he would be at Langtree Park from the start of next season – was already involved in working with Saints to recruit for the 2013 campaign attitudes began to change.

For fans who can remember winter rugby, of all the changes that have arrived since Super League and summer rugby the emergence of the ‘mid-season transfer announcement’ is probably still the most alien concept.

The fact that coaches and players are saying they will be playing elsewhere next season while still sporting the colours of your favourite club is a scenario the majority of fans are truly struggling to come to terms with.

Before Super League and salary caps it used to be very simple.

If a coach quit or was sacked during the season he left the club there and then, and a player transferred started playing for his new club the following week – all other business was conducted in the close season.

However, now coaches and players are asking fans to believe they are committed to the cause despite the fact they have just stated that their future lies elsewhere – insisting they will not be distracted.

For fans this kind of news is just a blow to morale.

The basic difference is that loyalty to a club for a player or coach is conditional – they are after all merely employees – while for the fan that relationship is unconditional.

From the professional point of view of the player or coach it is viable to say I will do my best and mean it, but for the fan who could never walk away from the club it is hard to believe it.

Essentially you are asking a fan to contemplate the following scenario.

A Hull FC fan stands up to address the main stand at the KC Stadium in mid-May next season and says ‘While I have loved following the Airlie Birds for the past 30 years, I feel Hull KR are showing more potential and I shall be buying a season ticket for Craven Park for next season. In the meantime, however, I will still wear the black and white shirt and be singing Old Faithful and the shoot the Red Red Robin song with the same gusto as the rest of you, thank you.’

Quite simply that is never going to happen.

And the chasm between the player or coach’s approach to a club and that of the fan will never narrow.

So perhaps the solution to this problem lies with the clubs themselves.

I know clubs want to put bums on seats and I know clubs want to sell season tickets and that is why these announcements are made when they are to keep interest bubbling.

However, by doing so the clubs may be alienating more of their long-standing supporters than attracting new ones, and surely if that were to prove to be the case it would be better to just keep Mum until the close season and sell the season tickets then.