Cronulla Sharks front-rower Thomas Hazelton has reportedly entered preliminary talks with a rival NRL team as he enters the final 12 months of his contract.
Hazelton, a fan favourite of the club, has been in incredible form over the past two seasons, cementing a regular spot in the team and even scoring seven tries in 2024.
A late bloomer, his game has evolved after earning a promotion to the Top 30 squad in 2023 and having been a consistent performer in the NSW Cup.
With plenty of size - at 198 centimetres and 116 kilograms - he has been with Cronulla's program since the end of 2017 and has played his way through the club's pathways system.
Still off-contract at the end of the 2025 NRL season, Hazelton has held preliminary talks with the Newcastle Knights as they look to replace Leo Thompson who has agreed to join the Canterbury Bulldogs, per The Sydney Morning Herald.
The update on Hazleton's future comes after he appeared on the Knights radar at the beginning of January and has also been chased by a number of rival NRL teams.
"I have had inquiries from seven or eight clubs about big Tom - they are waiting until November 1 when they are officially allowed to talk to him about 2026," his manager Gavin Orr told Wide World of Sports in September last year.
"He is really in hot demand - he's had a breakout year."
Other players off-contract at the end of the 2025 season include Kade Dykes, Ronaldo Mulitalo, William Kennedy and Samuel Stonestreet.
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With the arrival of Addin Fonua-Blake and a pay rise to Nicho Hynes, it is extremely likely that some of the players above will find themselves elsewhere and away from the Shire the following season.
โThe main thing for me is to play footy. I have a team around me who know what my ambitions are and what I want to do in this game," Mulitalo told The Herald after being linked with a switch to the Brisbane Broncos.
โI love this club, I've poured my heart into this place through the good times and bad times.โ
โWith the arrival of Addin Fonua-Blake and a pay rise to Nicho Hynesโฆ โ
Whatโs this about a pay rise to Hynes ? My understanding is that he arrived at Cronulla in 2022 at $600K and at the end of the season was offered an upgraded contract for 2023 to 2029 at $1M. Has he been upgraded again ? First Iโve heard about it.
The problem with Hazleton is a classic Craig Fitzgibbon failure. He wants to be a nice guy and canโt face dropping players. Equally, he will always renew players who are over the hill (eg Rudolph or Hamlyn-Uele) or who are just depth players who will never be better than NSW Cup standard (eg Burns, Berrell or Hiroti).
If he were prepared to be hard-nosed he could find extra money with no problem (Oregon Kaufusi is off contract at the end of 2025. He is on $600K and in his two years at the club has shown nothing like the upside or potential of Hazleton).