Why Bateman's loan to Super League casts serious doubt over his NRL future

The Wests Tigers have stunned the NRL world by immediately shipping UK import John Bateman to Warrington in the Super League for the remainder of the 2024 season.

However, Bateman will return to the Tigers ahead of the 2025 season and see out the remaining two years on his contract with the struggling club.

No official reason has been given by either clubs on why the 30-year-old has been loaned to the UK on a short-term basis and The Daily Telegraph’s Michael Carayannis believes there is significant doubt over Bateman returning to the NRL at all.

“The Tigers and Warrington are remaining tight-lipped about the situation,” Carayannis told SEN 1170 Breakfast.

“Like everyone, I find this bizarre and quite strange.

“He hasn’t been playing well over the last few weeks and there is no doubt about that. The Tigers will get some savings in their salary cap for the rest of the season which will probably be around $100,000.

“I just don’t know if John Bateman ever comes back to the NRL. Is this a long-term play from both parties? That’s a question that must be answered.

“The NRL won’t allow a player to hold two contracts at the one time. Bateman will have to cancel his Tigers contract, sign a Warrington contract and as soon as he does, he can sign a new Tigers deal from November 1 this year.”

Tigers CEO Shane Richardson had earlier in the year visited Super League teams in the UK to gauge their level of interest in acquiring a number of Tigers players.

SEN’s Andrew Voss believes Bateman was destined to leave the Tigers for the Super League once his name was floated by Richardson in May 2024 and theorised that it was Bateman’s camp that agitated for the release.

“He’s not coming back,” Voss declared on SEN 1170 Breakfast.

“The mail I was getting from the UK was that Bateman was coming home. That was two months ago.

“It was public knowledge over there. It was being written up as if it was a certainty that he was coming back.

“There’s been fishing going on but not from the Tigers. It must have been the Bateman camp. It would have to be.

“Did the UK media just make it up? I wouldn’t have thought so. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.”

Bateman has played 32 matches for the Tigers since joining in 2023 and has just won five games in that time.