Saints will be concerned about Eastmonds natural tendancy to drift in and out of a game when he is playing at 7. Pryce is exactly the same kind of player and to have both at half back could be a worry for the team as a whole. To be fair, Leon has done more drifting out this season so you are even more reliant on your 7 if he plays like that again next year.

If Saints have offered Eastmond a contract based on his potential and he has turned it down, personally, I would start looking elsewhere. Saints will not be able to match Sale RU for contract terms so its pointless pricing themselves out for a player whose ability to consistently perform week in week out in a pivotal position is untried and untested. He may turn out to be the next Andrew Johns, but then again, maybe not.

Probably earns 20 k a year but was paid a 2 million signing on fee! Moran is loaded!

90K a year he's getting at Wire.

Balls. Salford stated he turned down a 6 figure sum for them.

Warrington aren't yet of the stature of club where you take a pay cut.

Half-full, half-empty - makes no difference. The issue is that the second best side in SL has allowed itself - for whatever reason, including the perfectly reasonable "we need to divert revenue from the players in order to fund the new stadium" excuse - to fall into a hole which will be pretty difficult to get out of.

I'm not sure what McManus is smoking, TBH. On the one hand he's letting our only playmaker go whilst spouting lines such as "pinning our hopes on Eastmond", "building for the future" etc. Fair enough. I can buy that. But now it turns out that Saints AREN'T anywhere near as confident in Eastmond's playmaking abilities as McManus has been claiming, because if they were he'd be signed on an extension by now. So one of the most acclaimed sides in RL is now in a position where it's prepared to jeopardise an ENTIRE SEASON on a player who if he does work out may choose not to stay with us anyway and if he doesn't it'll mean we're screwed.

Clearly McManus likes to take risks. Let's hope for Saints' sake the next chamber isn't packing a bullet.

What your saying makes sense and is very worrying - we should be tying Eastmond down for at least 2 years or getting shut now.

Whats also worrying is that a player who has been nurtured and developed by the Saints since he was 13 has finally broken into the first team only to then seemingly hold the club to ransom because all the cards are now stacked in his favour.

I know the career of an RL player is only short and they have to make money when they can but is there any sense in moving to RU at his age with no idea what position he is going to play and if he will succeed at all. To be honest, better players seemingly more suited to kick and clap have tried and failed.

Doesnt exactly fill you with confidence. Has Martin Offiah stamped all over it IMO.

The guy is a class 1 tool.

I can understand McManus being less than pleased about some of the stuff coming out of Eastmond and Offiah's lips. There are few things in sport more dislikeable than someone playing one club off against another. In any sane world you'd tell such people to go and phuck themsleves. But Planet Sport isn't any sane world. A precident has already been set at the club with Cunningham. If I had a penny for every time I heard him playing Saints off against Wigan during the first five years of his career I'd have more money than him. In the end we paid up. We had to.

Offiah is merely a symptom - not the problem. You don't hire an agent with the media profile of Martin Offiah unless you've got plans to move up in the world.