It did read 'a nice pay rise.'

Not sure what happened there.

iPhone squire?

T'was indeed.

All this talk of patties has got me craving a 'proper' chippy!

Wait a second, 35k not a great wage? I'm on half of that working nights doing a job I really wish I wasn't. This lad is getting paid to go keep fit, play a sport he enjoys playing while hanging around with his mates. He gets plenty of time off over the year and for those that say "but it's a short career" I would love to do a dream job for half my working life that could potentially get me a decent career for the rest of it doing some form of coaching or training.

For a 22yr old 35k is a lot no matter where he lives and he should be happy to be earning that knowing he is going to be paid a whole lot more the harder he works and the better he gets.

My mother works as a manager within cancer research and earns less than this amount, she is in her 50's and this is the best wage she has been on. My father a warehouse manager and belting engineer earns approx 10k less than Widdop again in his 50's. They both work longer hours with much less down time than Gareth gets.

Some of you may think 35k isn't worth getting out of bed for but the majority of people especially in the north that wage would be a dream.

With average house prices in Melbourne being around the $565k+ mark, his salary wont go that far. You could buy half of Salford for that !

Gareth only went up into the top 25 at Melbourne this year, minimum payment for the top 25 is $55k a year, so this is where the journos are getting the $55k figure from, previous years he was on even less, but he has been an apprentice at Melbourne since he was 16, through the 18s, 20s, NSW Cup and now 1st Grade and like all apprentices he started on the minimum wage for the grade that he was playing at the time, he has bided his time in the lower ranks so to speak and taken whatever the prevailing rates that were available at the time and gone with the flow. He is on, with others at the club, the current minimum wage + match payments which would more than double the minimum wage at the conclusion of the season.
He has also just signed a 3 year deal, (3rd year is player activated) with the Storm which is worth 200K+ a year.

Journo’s are lazy by nature and more often than not report half a story or their own spin on a story anyway.

Professional players these days deserve all they can get because contrary to belief they only get 1 day off a week and if you’re a rep player up to a month off at the conclusion of the 4 Nations before pre-season starts all over again, they spend a lot of time away from home and family and not to mention the toll they put their bodies through in their relatively short careers.

Come the new Cap deal in 2014 players should be able to increase their salaries’ by at least 50%. And good luck to thenm I say.

While I appreciate spending time away from family, and the stresses and strains playing a game must come with I have nurse friends who are lucky to get one day off fortnight, work double shifts and get paid a hell of a lot less than 35k a year! Also take in to account the length of the players days, not many clubs drag their players in at 6am anymore and most will be at home or in the pub having a nice cold beer by 4pm.

A nurses career may go on longer but you say that as if the rugby player has no choice in the matter. He among many others are encouraged to go to college, many Rovers players have their courses funded and many already have the qualifications to go out in to the real world and start earning a healthy living. They do not in the majority just get thrown on to the scrap heap at 35 with a handshake and well wishes.

Also house prices may be that high over there but Gareth is 22 and knows he will earn mega bucks (injury permitting) within a short period that he will be able to buy a tidy house in the sun from. I'd be lucky to get a mortgage for 60k and I can tell you something that ain't gonna buy a lot!

As said he should and probably is very grateful that he is earning anything just to play the game that he loves while getting to hang around with his mates all the time safe in the knowledge that he is one day going to be pretty rich from doing just that.

On a side note how many days off do soldiers get while serving in Afghanistan? Their wages including bonuses probably don't come to that 35k amount and I'd bet the injuries sustained there are a little more worrying for their families.

Sports stars get paid healthily and fair enough it is accepted now, I am not going to take that away from them but when the minimum wage for a youngster in the first team is 35k and people say this isn't much is a really poor way to look at life and I may be wrong but to me it looks like those people have probably never had to worry about where the next penny is coming from and never truely learnt the true value of money.

Short careers? Are rugby league players incapable of doing anything once they finish playing? How much should Widdop be paid? I should imagine that this amount is his basic contract, with appearance bonuses, win bonuses, league placing bonuses etc factored in to his contract.

Valid points in a few areas and especially on the nurses, forces and to a degree I will add the teaching front, they deserve triple the pay that they are currently getting because of the nature and hours worked on the job. I understand where you are coming from, but I still stand by my comment that footy players deserve everything they can get, for the reasons previously mentioned, you say there is life after footy, but not all players have the option to re-train in a different field, then they have to start all over again on a minimum wage because of their lack of experience in their new professions!! Also how many of us have journos following our every move, they cannot let your hair down for fear of it appearing in the tabloids, I know people will say it goes with the job, but I don’t think I would like to live a life like that, so fair play to them if they get paid a lot more than most of us because they have to put up with a lot more than the most of us.

But getting back to the topic, I was only pointing out that the journos get things so wrong to build a story and I was correcting that point, a journo was trying to make out that half the Storm side was only on minimum wage so that they could keep the big 3, Cam, Cooper and Slater. When in fact with match payments they would be on double that if in 1st Grade.

Before the floor fell out of the economy a few years back that sum is just over £20k remember. And as far as cost of living goes over there it will be a similar sum.

Well we are not talking about a few years back we are talking about today!!! Or should we also compare it to the 40s when it was probably worth 2 and 6!!!!!

Widdop's still got a hell of a lot to prove.

I must admit last year's four nations p155ed me off, no end. Just because he plays in the NRL it's to be assumed that he's a better bet at full back than everyone else? His performances proved otherwise.

I'd love to be on 35k.