I dont know, I dont know what is in his contract. How can you say it seems certain a clause exists, I mean I suggested it moths ago but I wasn't certain about it by any means. How is my thinking short term? I want to keep the best & most promising player on our books for the next 2 years, not sell him now, get a little bit of money and hope we find a suitable replacement, the short term thinkers are those perhaps like yourself, that are looking to make a quick buck out of our best?

He can leave free as a bird on good terms when his deal comes to an end, we haven't treated him like dirt, he hasn't treated us like dirt, everybody is happy that everybody has kept to their terms of the contract.

while we may be able to force him to stay till end of his contract, we cant force him to perform on the pitch. It serves no purpose to retain a player who wants away.

think if he wants to go we should let him as no point keeping a player who wants to go and in long run will only unsettle dressing room if he was forced to stay and wed end up with the paul newlove situation all over again and would stop any chances of burgess returning to bulls after stint in oz

This is what will happen if Burgess is sold.

The club sells Burgess for an undisclosed fee, which means they have got next to nothing for him. Bulls lose their best man, nothing is spent on strengthening the squad, no replacement of adequate quality is signed, we see another miserable season.

Those that think we are going to get a bit of cash for Burgess and see it used for transfer fees for top players are going to be very very dissapointed and you'll be wishing that Burgess will have been held to his contract so we'd have had the advantage of a top quality player playing for us for a further two seasons.

All it will do is further pin down the fact that we have become a selling club.

But Macca is the greatest thing since sliced bread, surley he wouldn't be unsettled at staying here with the greatest coach he's ever had, and at the only club he's wanted to play for.

Anyhow, I think selling him is a great idea, so lets sell our best guy in the hope that he MIGHT one day come back to us, bloody brilliant idea that is. IF Sam decides to come back to England after his stint down under, he's more than likley going to be at the stage where he is looking for the big pay day. You can forget about us offering him a big pay day, we don't pay big.

Ah . . . . you're slipping back into how you first started posting on here . . . . . which, IMHO, is a bit of a shame.

Which is?

There is enough rumour out there from several sources at home & in Aus that this NRL get out clause at the end of next season is in the contract.

So we are going to have 2 options. Allow him to go this off season if our valuation is met. Keep him for one season more and allow him to go with our thanks and our good wishes with no compensation to the NRL.

He has always given his all for the club and there is no reason to suspect he will "down tools" if we say that an offer hasn't come in and he is playing with us next season.

I think season ticket sales will have a big effect on which option the club goes with.

The cost cutting which has gone on recently was enough to stabilise the finances - [ias long as[/i various attendance figures & season ticket sales for next year are met.

If this (up until now) very poor season pushes ticket sales below projection then I think the club will have to sell Burgess early.

If this little flurry of wins +/- a playoff spot sells a few hundred more tickets then I think we will be able to keep him next season. A Bulls team with Burgess in it next season is much preferable to one without

As I've said, a shame.

The thought of Burgess leaving depresses the heck out of me.

It's not helped by the complete lack of positive spin from the club, instead we as usual get to hear rumours from Oz without any comment from our club. It may well be there is no comment to make, but a clarification would be useful to say the least.

After all Sam is the new "Robbie Paul" of the club, the young marketable figurehead that typifies the club's plan to bring through its juniors and build a team from the bottom "the right way" as McNamara mentioned at the fans forum.

Every day I look for some more positive news about next season or any new signings. I hope we get some more positive news soon or season ticket sales won't be very good. The club need to create a positive spin now more than ever. We've had our worst season since 91/92 and we need reasons to be cheerful. The one main story doing the rounds is that our best young player is off and that's it.

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How will he leave on good terms if we keep him for 2 years after he wanted to leave ?

How would people feel if losing Burgess a year early meant we had the funds to sign a young, promising, British Scrum half?

I firmly believe Burgess will go in 2010 anyway if we turn down a potential deal with the SS. Personally I'd cut a deal with Crowe and throw a deal together for someone like Myler. I'm a Bulls supporter, not a Burgess supporter and if he want's a new challenge we should grant him his wish and thank him for his efforts. He may or may not return but no player is bigger than the club. I'll be gutted to see him go, but if we can ease some of the blow then we should definitely consider letting him go now.

If we can use this to genuinely strengthen the team then fair enough.

Unfortunately I think Myler to Warrington is a done deal. As for other promising young British scrum halves who else is there? Certainly nobody who could fill Burgess's shoes as a focal point for the fans to support and for the club to use in their marketing.

I just hope that the silence from the club on the transfer front is because they are working on some deals that will see us strengthen the side and not just leave a large Burgess sized whole in the squad.

Myler may or may not be a done deal.. certainly quite a few rumours flying around. The news coming out of the Salford camp seemed to be that no satisfactory deal had been reached with Warrington as yet. I agree that simply selling Burgess would be a PR disaster for the club. We perhaps have a figure from SS that they're prepared to pay and we're now trying to recruit some players already under contract.

For now I guess we will have to trust the club are getting the best deal possible, but given some recent recruitment I can fully understand why people are a little worried.