Northampton Saints seek 'happy medium' in Henry Pollock contract talks amid £1m salary suggestion

The Northampton director of rugby, Phil Dowson, has said the club “have got to find a happy medium” in contract talks with Henry Pollock after the player’s representative, Eddie Hearn, suggested he should be earning £1m a year.

Pollock is said to earn around £150,000 a season and his current deal expires at the end of the 2026-27 campaign. Hearn has stated Pollock could earn “10 times” that if he were to move to another club, warning “he can’t stay at the club on the money he’s on”.

The 21-year-old has 13 England caps but has made just one start. Hearn says his commercial profile warrants a seven-figure salary. Pollock is among the 25 England players to receive an enhanced contract worth £150,000 and Dowson expressed confidence the Prem champions can keep hold of him.

He said: “It is going well. We are still pushing it through. What Eddie Hearn also said, and people have gone straight to the million-pound remark, but the other thing he said is that Henry wants to win stuff, Henry wants to stay at Saints, Henry wants to play with that group of players. He wants to win the World Cup. I embrace that. I am all for that. The appetite is for him to stay. Now, we’ve got to find a happy medium. We really want to keep him, he really wants to stay, and that’s a great start.

“We still have to make decisions based on our budget and our financial situation. We’ll continue to do that in the best way possible. That is in discussion with agents, discussions with the group and discussions with the decision-makers about what we can afford and how we put a squad together, how that fits within our budget.”

Salary cap constraints mean Pollock’s chances of receiving a seven-figure offer are slim, not least because Northampton’s self-imposed budget is significantly less than the cap’s ceiling.

Dowson added: “My job is to try and fit 57, 58 players within a squad on a budget. I’ll continue to do that. Eddie Hearn is great for the game, we want to keep Henry Pollock. ­Fundamentally, nothing has changed. What he says is based on his job.

“Eddie Hearn has a job to do, and that is to promote his client and ask for more money for his client. He’s doing both of those very effectively. We’ve said we want to publicise and grow the game and he has the ability to do that.”