Quote RLFANS Correspondent="RLFANS Correspondent"Sorry to be nosy, but where have you heard this?
He was in the press box last week at Warrington v Saints'"
To answer your second point, he may well have a new employer.
To answer your first it was noticable that there was no weekend round up in the sports section on Monday, and no piece on Tuesday.
So I did some digging around on the internet and as soon as I typed his name in, the first search offered was "Dave Hadfield to leave the Independent" so I obviously wasn't the first person looking for this.
Found several sites suggesting that the Independent and Evening Standard sports desks were being merged and Hadfield was one of several journalists offered terms to leave.
There is a piece in todays Independent by Ian Laybourn, who I know nothing about, but hopefully this means my prediction that all coverage was to end was just me being a pessimist.