Jackson Hastings has joined a new club.
He joins Newcastle Knights for the 2023 season who become the fifth club Hastings has played for in the last six years.
He left the NRL in 2018 to join Salford Red Devils and after 18 months there, Hastings joined Wigan Warriors.
He played in Grand Finals for both the Red Devils and Warriors and won the 2019 Man of Steel.
In 2022 he joined Wests Tigers but after just one year of a two year deal he has left to join the Newcastle Knights in a swap deal with sees David Klemmer go the other way as the Tigers put together a brilliant pack which is set to include Wigan Warriors star John Bateman as well.
The deal Hastings has signed at the Knights is a three-year deal which is much longer than the one he had at Wests.
It secures his future too which was certainly not happening at Wests who hadn’t made him a contract offer despite the fact he entered the last 12 months of his contract recently allowing him to talk to other clubs from November 1st.
The contract sees Hastings remain at the club until the end of the 2025 season meaning that should any club want to tempt him back to Super League, they’ll have to wait until he is 26.
Hastings is entering his prime years at 26 and will perhaps be heading out of those prime years at the end of this deal which means a return to Super League then could be plausible especially with how much he loved his time in England.
It is believed that the other terms of his deal, including his salary, are similar to at Wests Tigers.
Whatever the fee is it must be less than $850,000. This is the sum David Klemmer was set to pocket in the last year of his deal at Newcastle which is one of the reasons the Knights have moved him on to pasters new.
