Ben Hunt

Hunt “open to all offers” as Queensland club become early front-runners

The Dragons captain was released on Wednesday morning.

Published by
Scott Pryde

Ben Hunt's manager has confirmed the released former St George Illawarra Dragons' captain is open to all ofers, including the English Super League for 2025.

Hunt, who was contracted with the Dragons for 2025, was released on Wednesday morning by the club from the final year of his playing contract after weeks of heavy speculation, and public comments regarding his future.

The former club captain has no current deal for 2025, but his manager Cole Davis told SEN Radio's Ben Davis that Hunt was open to anything in 2025.

“Is Ben Hunt looking to come home (to Queensland)? Is he open to all offers? Including Super League?" Ben Davis said on SENQ Radio.

“The answer is yes, yes and yes. The only thing he won't entertain is a switch to rugby.

“He is open to all offers. Ideally he would like to come home but could stay in Sydney and even find himself in England.

“Hunt has a week off from Kangaroos camp. Phone calls will be made in earnest and they will get to work straight away.”

The news comes as the Dolphins became the first club to publically admit they would be interested in making a play for Hunt, although had no knowledge of his release from the joint-venture prior to this morning.

It has long been tipped Hunt's real desire is to return to Queensland to finish his career after seven seasons with the Dragons, the last four of which he has served as captain.

"The Dolphins have always said that we are interested in good players that are available," Dolphins CEO Terry Reader said per AAP.

"We only learned of the situation regarding Ben Hunt from the media this morning and have not had any contact with him or his management in relation to him coming to the Dolphins.

"However we are sure if he is interested in speaking to us, we will hear from his management."

Meanwhile, outgoing Dragons CEO Ryan Webb labelled the move of Hunt's surprise release as 'best for the club', with assertions in the media that Hunt and coach Shane Flanagan's relationship had become untenable.

“It's not a one-off thing where it just becomes a conversation, there's lot of little pieces that over time, you have a bit of a conversation and you an see something doesn't feel quite right,” Webb told SEN 1170 The Run Home.

“There's another conversation where you say, ‘Yea, someone else has noticed it or someone has verbalised it', that happened over a couple of months.

“I'd say just in the last few days, we sat there and thought, we could see there was a few comments publicly made (that) Ben put out there and that Shane put out there, I guess we could see from my point of view and a couple of others (thought) we need to bring this to a head now because it's not going to work.

“You could see things were going to ultimately affect the other players and people around the club, it sort of builds up slowly, I guess it came to a head a few days ago and then you sit down and go, ‘Ok guys what are one or two ways we can bring this to a close', and that's how we came to (the decision) that we did.”

Published by
Scott Pryde