the bulls dont get to choose the amount for this OOC

But George wasn't OOC.

Wardle and Helliwell were, which is why their fees were set by the rules, not an agreement. George Burgess' fee would need to have been agreed by both the Bulls and Souths.

I reckon we got two tickets to Russell Crowe's next film and a bag of fruit gums.

someone put the figure up at time wardle went to hudds. Think for 3 yrs he was here it worked out about 15kish (so tariff would be about £100 a week). hellewell was only here 2 yrs so another 10k for him. 25k total, give or take a few hundred for those 2 and I'd guess if we got anything more than 25k for george,given his age and relative inexperience, then we'd be doing well. So maybe 50k coming in to add to whatever settlement we reach with orford to fund potential transfers.

Maybe the people moaning at club for allowing george to leave would be better served questioning his tw@ of a manager who was busilt touting him round down under, despite him having 2 years left on his deal. At the end of the day the fringe benefits lifestyle wise to george of playing in australia would pretty heavily outweigh any potential extra wage we could have offered him to try and retain him (not to mention potential disruption within youth system if one player is on significantly more money) so I dont really see what club have done to stop him going. Surely better in this instance to take a reasonable fee to re-invest into either signings/youth system not to mention georges wage is now available for another kid coming into setup.

Unless we have built in some extra payments for the years to come (assuming he stays at Souths) based on first team appearances and/or first international cap

Supporters demand their club pay big money to buy all the best players and pay big money to sign up all the best current players. They don't care where the money comes from and will slag off their own club bigtime whenever they don't think the board are stumping up enough money. Realism isn't a strongpoint with them but it pees me off when they say the club "should have kept" so-and-so, like so-and-so was a dog.

Adey, you make it sound like they took him away and gave us what they fancied. The lad is under contract and they wanted him. Hence the responsibility to make the deal attractive was theirs, not ours. Considering we have just sold more season tickets and taken more money than for the last number of years and there is clear evidence we are investing in the squad (even well placed sources suggesting we would pay a fee for a certain stand off) the idea that we would even field a phone call for 10-20k would seem very odd indeed.

realisitically what valuation would you put on a player yet to make his senior debut (and from previous comments by the coaching staff not expected to feature more than a handful of times this coming year) and with only 2 years left on his current deal?

Assuming that what Connor said is subsequently confirmed by the club, then at a rough guess yes, I suspect it went a bit like that. Not helped by the club's biggest shareholder being his manager, either. Except that, unlike the dealings with Mimis and Pratford, I think Crowe is more likely to have behaved responsibly and offered a sensible amount. After all, its probably his own money shelled out, and he has good marketing reasons to want the lad.

What was the club to do? Tell him he could not go unless we got £100k or whatever? And have one very unhappy bunny twittering away how crap the club is and winding his brother and everyone else up? Probably getting paid but not playing?

If all the club could get from Crowe for Sam was £100k, I'd suggest it would be very odd indeed to expect the club to have been able to hold out for more than a fraction of that for his younger, far less experienced and (at present) far less capable brother?

But we are all speculating. It may become a bit more clear if and when the Bulls issue a statement, and you can anyway see the total transfer fees received when the 2010 accounts are published.

When did the twins sign for us? 2 years ago? 3 years ago? Can't remember now.

Lets say for argument's sake it was 3. Then take into account his 2 years left on his deal. That would mean if he left at the end of this contract, we would be entitled to an approximate £25k fee, providing we offered him a deal too, yes?

Bearing that in mind, I would expect that is the amount we get now. No point letting him leave for less, when we could keep him for 2 years and then get that amount. On the flip side, daft to keep a player who doesn't want to be here when you're going to lose him anyway in 2 years time. So I would expect whatever the compensation figure we would get for him (which is about £5k per year he's been with us) at the end of his contract, is about the same as the figure we'll get for letting him go to Souths now.

I'm only speculating, but I would be surprised if it was far off the mark.

and AFAIK we'd only get that figure if he went to another SL club. If we made him wait two years then he went to souths anyway we'd get diddly squat. Dont think theres any agreement in place between RFL and NRL to honour the payments for youth products. AFAIK its just an RFL agreement.

regarding george,i once spoke with him after a rhinos game,he had only just signed for the club and was just 16 at the time,he said that both he and twin brother tom couldn't wait to make it into the elite rhinos squad eventually alongside eldest brother luke,sam was apparently the black sheep of the family 2.486328125:10