Reds head coach Brad Thorn is reportedly angry at the three Reds players who have been stood down by the Queensland Rugby Union after refusing to take short-term pay cuts.
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Wallabies loose forward Izack Rodda and up-and-coming stars Isaac Lucas and Harry Hockings, who all share the same agent, opted against taking a competition-wide salary cut and registering for the federal government’s JobKeeper subsidy.
According to a report from the Sydney Morning Herald, the relationship between Reds coach Thorn and the three players in question has broken down and they are now considering their options elsewhere.
All three had been integral to Thorn's plans at the Australian franchise.
Lucas and Hockings are reported to be pursuing deals in Japan, while 25-Test Rodda wants a move to another Australian outfit.
The relationship between Thorn and Rodda was already somewhat strained after Thorn decided to hand the Reds captaincy to flanker Liam Wright, who only has one test cap to his name, at the start of the year.
"At first it was a pretty hard pill to swallow," Rodda told AAP in January.
"It left me questioning what else I had to do to get it... it's hard to swallow your pride."
The Herald reports that the players now have a "severely strained" relationship with Thorn, who hasn't spoken to them since their decision to turn down salary cuts.
Commenting on the situation, Queensland Rugby Union boss David Hanham said it came down to a matter of values.
"These situations are unprecedented, so everyone deals with the emotion of this in different ways. To be honest I think it's a question for the players around their view of it," Hanham said.
"They've obviously got their concerns. They've got a lot of mates here and they love playing rugby here. This is a global pandemic and clearly there are some things that are making them nervous.
"You come back to our values; with the team it's about mateship, it's about accountability, it's about resilience, it's about care for the cause. When you put your heart and soul into it, clearly people that are a part of that feel they want to be on that journey and others make a decision not to."
- TEAMtalk media
