OK then this aint the rumour mill…….just after opinions.

At the back end of last year I was talking to some wealthy pie sponsors I know who claimed to be in the know. At the time it was rumoured Sam Tomkins would follow his brother and switch codes to RU for a large sum of money.

They said to counter this Wigan done a deal with Sam making him the highest paid player in the league. The figure I was told was £350,000K and more would come from elsewhere.
It was suggested (with raised eyebrows) that this was known by the RFL who were desperate to stop players defecting?

Anyway I’d almost forgot about it until I seen that Sam had joined the Sky team working with Carney on his Super League Super Stars thing as well as having his own slot listing his favourite tries of all time. The penny dropped…..maybe the Sky deal is the “elsewhere”???......Money through the back door???

Rip it to bits if yer want. It’s just something I was told and probably sh_te & coincidence

That is the question. We will find out when we see how Tomkins develops in his media role.

I've said on the VT, I've no moral problem with Tomkins earning extra money from Sky doing media work. BUT to earn said money he has to have an acceptable competency in the role. If it's something he's been given as a means purely of giving him more money that he cannot earn from Wigan because of the salary cap, then it's wrong.

Sky has to have value from Tomkins and unless he turns out to be good in the role I cannot see where that value comes from. His first show might attract a few curious RL fans that otherwise wouldn't have watched the show, but he's not a big enough name to attract viewers who weren't already interested in the sport. I would love to know who is ultimately paying for his new career. Is it Sky? Do they contra it off the TV deal that is given to the RFL? Do Wigan get less of a cut of the Sky money and that is used to pay Tomkins?

People have suggested he should be able to earn more money than he can at Wigan, to keep him in the game. But it's not acceptable, unless such red carpets are made available to all players. James Roby is at least as good a player as Tomkins is, and he's not being given extra money left, right and centre.

The whole thing is going to end in tears anyway. Tomkins is proving he's motivated either by fame or by fortune. His fawning over the Twickenham experience recently was another pathetic episode in his PR drive, which ultimately looks to end with him playing Rugby Union at some undefined point in the future. Everyone can surely see that, so why are the RFL bending over backwards to pump money into the Sam Tomkins machine, when all he's going to do is take our coin, then turn and take the RFU's in a year or two?

The Tomkins situation is just another example of Wigan's failure to take the salary cap concept on board. They moan and moan and moan and moan about the cap and losing players to Union, but get the exemptions and spend the benefit on convicted criminals from the NRL. Why not give Tomkins the money Finch, Leuleuai and Gelling are earning instead of having such elaborate schemes put in place with the RFL to get him the money anyway?

There is enough money, how else could we afford to pay him £350,000 pa (if anyone believes that then the world is flat). Don't forget, the salary cap was brought in to primarily stop clubs going bust, not as a way of allowing our box office stars to leave the sport. If we allow this to happen we may as well go back to a purely amateur game.

Slightly OTT there, is like saying we've lost our best trader to a rival business, we thats it folk time for the other 1000' s to pack up and go home. Funnily enough there was RL for 100 years before Sam T. Even Wigan won 1 or 2 trophies without him being born, if he was to leave it would be a far cry from the end of RL. I'm always surprised how much stock is put into individuals when actually we watch for the game not the players. The players are the sprinkles on the icing, not the whole cake.

Hope there was enough metaphor and simily in there for you.

Tomkins is the only player with any profile outside of SL. I have no problem at all with all-out efforts being made to keep him in the game, even if it only works for a few years. We're already at risk of looking like a feeder sport. The only thing I don't like is his fawning over union.