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

Sam is the best rugby player (both codes) in Britain, he's worth keeping, I think there should always be ways to the change the cap for special cases, be it Wigan or Saints players or whoever, if the RFL deem it a requirement. I doubt the SKY deal is anything other than another line of income / exposure for him.

The cap is there to stop RL teams going bust to win the cup etc, and whilst players themselves shouldn't make that happen, if there are ways to keep a special player like him in the sport then i'm ALL FOR IT.

Next time it could be a Saints player. In fact last time it was iirc.

Sam Tomkins WILL end up in union sooner rather than later, and that is a fact!! A couple of bad results, cup exit etc and watch them big union clubs come calling with massive offers, offers that Wigan wont be able to to turn down!!!

Indeed it was - Scully and Gillette.

Whatever the justifications are for "bending the rules" to keep him, it's still dead unfair to all the other teams and destroys the whole point of having a salary cap in the first place. Ultimately he will end up in RU or the NRL as there is simply not enough money in British RL to compete with what they can throw in his direction, fact. All this does is (slightly) delay the inevitable and skew the playing field in our favourite club's favour in the meantime, utterly against the spirit of what the cap is supposed to be about, and undermining the supposed integrity and fairness of the whole competition in the meantime.

Obviously all part of Saracens plans for Samuel, Watch out for the Pies ground sharing with them at Twickers.

wasn't it Keiron Cunningham,when the Welsh R.U.or some r.u.club didn't the RFL pay part of his contract to keep him in Super league?

KC and Radders (Pie Nomads)

But if the rules can be skewed for a 'special case' then what's the point in the rule.
If the cap is there to stop clubs going bust then scrap the cap and replace with a profit or break even rule.
If the cap is there for a level playing field then it needs to be kept level.

If sky want to pay Sam for another job that's their own thing and I have no issue with that.

In fact if you scrapped the cap and put a break even rule in place there would be nothing to stop wealth men from where ever paying players wages. So long as the debt is not tied to the club or if it is it's affordable within the break even rules then I could not care less.

The big question is what is the cap for? A level playing field or to stop the clubs going bust, (if it's the latter then its not doing it very well, London, Crusaders, Wakey, then all the clubs that regularly make a loss including us).

The cap rules have been skewed for a while now. Players who had played for 10 seasons at the club (count only 50% of their wages on the cap) The home grown player(s) (Sam) ruling. And there's at least another one which I can't remember at the moment. (something to do with junior players) The original cap idea of 50% of turnover was probably the best, and that was designed to stop clubs going bust. However I agree with you that a profit related cap cap maybe worth looking at. The actual rules are here for all to ponder. rfllive.dyndns.org/~rflmedia/doc ... on%20E.pdf As I've said elsewhere Sam working for Sky is no different than Scully working for Gillette or Burrow and Sinfield working as pundits for the Superleague Show.

The cap rules have been skewed for a while now. Players who had played for 10 seasons at the club (count only 50% of their wages on the cap) The home grown player(s) (Sam) ruling. And there's at least another one which I can't remember at the moment. (something to do with junior players) The original cap idea of 50% of turnover was probably the best, and that was designed to stop clubs going bust. However I agree with you that a profit related cap cap maybe worth looking at. The actual rules are here for all to ponder. rfllive.dyndns.org/~rflmedia/doc ... on%20E.pdf As I've said elsewhere Sam working for Sky is no different than Scully working for Gillette or Burrow and Sinfield working as pundits for the Superleague Show.

Don't see a problem with it. He is one of the very best talents around so we need to keep him. Add to that he's probably the closest thing to national recognition rugby league possesses then he is very valuable to the sport.

If the wages are coming from Sky then it doesn't breach the salary cap so there is no issue, it's just like working a second job.

Yes your right.....but more to the point do you think some of these jobs are invented to fit the bill [ii.e.[/i boost their salary's?

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.