The league cap is what, 1.4 million? The figure being bounded about is 400k a season for Joel. Now even if it was half that, there is no way any Super Duper League team can spend 200k on one player with the limitations imposed by the salary cap.

He was still on a youth contract. There were offers on the table from Wigan and Northampton and, with the RFU's help, Northampton blew the Wigan offer right out of the water. You have to balance out a player's value with how much of your cap space you're willing to give up to keep them. Nobody in RL thinks that Joel Tomkins is worth a full quarter of your salary cap. No player is. If it was a level playing field financially I don't think there'd be any debate about what Joel would do, but it isn't

Good.

The Indeendent referred to the "rumour" today and implied JT had pulled out of the 4 Nations because of it.

Press conf in 2 mins. We may find out more.

So scrap the cap and pay Joel Tomkins £400k. You then surely have to give Mossop £300k, Charnley £250k and so on. Even the for a wealthy club like Wigan, I suspect money would soon become the problem, rather than the cap.

Unless something dramatic happens (much more dramatic than raising or binning the salary cap), we've either got to put up with the likes of Eastmond and Tomkins being cherry-picked and or learn to love line-outs.
Tbf, we spent decades taking players from Union.
The one consolation is that the NRL is becoming an alternative, so players have a good option for staying in our sport, if not our League.

shaun wane just said in an interview on SSN that both tomkins are very happy at wigan. Maybe this has all been blown out of the water a little bit?

Not really. He's not going to say "They've both desperate to leave such a Mickey Mouse sport and go somewhere better, but we've just not got round to agreeing the compensation package for them yet" is he?

Tomkins pulled out of the 4Nations to focus on agreeing his Union deal. It might fall down yet if Wigan can't agree on the compensation package, but it's clear there are discussions going on about it.

What? Sam and Logan?

I hope you are right mate,don't want to see talented players leaving the game no matter what club they play for,even you guys.

He's not the messiah



and neither is his brother for that matter.

Get a grip FFS

Was that the point? I must have missed it Try replacing the name Tomkins - with Charmley, Lomax, Gaskell, Hardacre, Briscoe. Get a grip FFS!

Ian Lenagan doesn't seem to be worried about it.

I've got to admit, I was extremely worried that Joel and Sam may be leaving us but Ian's responses have assured me a bit

What has Ian Lenegan said?

Nothing as far as I'm aware.