Fair point but I’d have thought if the club were aware of the incident, they must also have been aware of the video. Hence the “rumoured” hush money.

He played for zero money, how is that fiddling? It’s pretty much the epitome of loyalty.

Indeed!

This isn’t a Wigan, or Hull or Cas thing (the clubs who’ve seen things like this happen with their players of late); this is a culture within rugby league across both sides of the World.

AND IT HAS TO STOP!

I think as a community of fans for this sport we have to get together and almost do something like an open letter to the players/coaches/clubs. They have their heads a few decades behind if they think that as professional athletes they should be drinking alcohol during the season, never mind if it’s a “day off”, and never mind going as far as being completely bladdered! That’s just an absolute disgrace.

Being a professional athlete means their body is their job. Being a professional athlete means that during the season, bar a glass of wine with a meal every now and again, these players should not be touching pints of beer/bitter/stout or spirits with sugary mixers. It’s not good for their muscles or organs and it takes more than a day of drinking water or some nice juices after a drinking session to get this stuff out of the body, it takes days, so how is it affecting them in training and how is that then affecting them on game days?

All this “cheat day”/“day off”/“treat day” stuff within athletes is such a 1990s-2000s way of thinking that it’s embarrassing to see it still goes on. Slamming a McDonald’s, a full pack of biscuits and and a full pack of Haribo down your cake hole on a day off isn’t a cheat or a treat, it’s acting unprofessionally. Never mind getting completely p¡ssed or shoving what these guys shove up their noses these days. That’s just an absolute ing disgrace that that goes on (and we all know it does, they aren’t all going to the toilets together and making those jangly metal and sniffing noises to clean each other’s sets of keys on the sly in a toilet cubicle!) or smoking as well.

A cheat day would be having a slice of cake or a lemonade with their meal instead of abstaining. A day off is sitting and relaxing or having a massage instead of training. A treat day is going shopping and maybe having a steak+potato wedges with glass of red wine in a bar instead of weighing their protein and carbs out for the day.

But we see these idiot rugby league players acting like mobs of teenagers on their first nights out banging fifteen pints and a gram of coke down them and ending up arguing, acting the hard man or fighting. Why do they have to act so unprofessionally and immaturely? Sam and Joel are 29 and 31. Not 17 and 19. And they aren’t the only ones. And I’ve seen worse than this video from RL players.

The argument of “but they are allowed to let their hair down on a day off, and they’re young lads acting like loads of young lads do across the country” is null and void. Yes the British and Aussie drinking culture is there and there are young men doing this all the time who aren’t rugby league players. But go to the Mediterranean and have a look at how young men act. Yes they drink and go out in groups but they are so much more mature and sophisticated about it than we are. It’s about time our whole culture changed rather than excuse it. And look at other athletes; Andy Murray, Adam Peaty, Anthony Joshua, Mo Farah - they are all young British men but does anyone think any of them are hammering fifteen pints, a gram of coke, a few Es and a bit of magic and maybe a bit of ketamine down them on their days off?

No?

So why is it alright for rugby league players?

If they want to act like amateurs maybe we should sack off the game as we see it and change to being an amateur sport. Clubs could thrive a bit more if they don’t have to pay the players all this money and fans could get into games a bit cheaper as well. The players can go and get jobs and train in the evenings and play at weekends. Then they can go and get leathered on their day off and it won’t affect any kind of “professionalism” because the word doesn’t exist in an amateur game...

Just because you wouldn't lift a finger to help anyone unless you were being paid for it, you mustn't assume that everyone else is the same.

The timing of everything leads to more questions than answers at the moment in terms of how, when and why the club have reacted. Either way the whole episode doesn't look good for the club and especially for the Tomkins brothers. At the moment I wouldn't lose any sleep if both never played for the club again.

The thing is, they are just two who’ve been caught on camera. This isn’t a Tomkins problem, this is a cultural problem in both England France Canada Australia and New Zealand within the sport of rugby league.

There are rugby league players doing this every week somewhere in Sydney/Manchester/Leeds and worse. But they’ve jut not all been caught on camera.

It’s the whole culture of the sport that needs to be looked at, not the punishment of these two morons.

This is true, but until that happens it's going to fall on the clubs to deal with their own miscreants whenever they are caught.

And the best way they can do that, in my view, is to deal out some exemplary punishments.

Big fines are a good thing, I reckon. Younger players in particular won't like the idea of that, and it's the younger players we have to start with: driving the message into their heads early on that having a career as a professional sportsman is not a blank cheque to do what they want until they're 35, with partying a viable option at every turn, but that it involves serious responsibility, and that straying from the path of self-discipline can have real consequences.

I find it ridiculously hard to believe the club had not seen this footage prior to the last couple of days. I may be wrong but if 2 of your high profile players are accused of acting in this way as an employer you have a responsibility to ask for the evidence prior to “dealing with it internally”.

The punishment since this came into the public domain has been swift and appropriate.

What seems to have gone on prior to this going into the public domain is sweep it under the carpet and hope it goes away with a bit of hush money.

These are young men who get idolised by the community’s in which they spend most of their time.

The arrogance this has given then is clear to see.

Many top clubs struggle due to cultural issues within the club, we seem to have a major problem with it.

When Madge arrived he signed 1 player and seemed to revolutionise the club culture which led to on field success.

This has clearly been eroded in the Wane years.

Very poor allround despite the retrospective action hopefully a turning point and a springboard to sort it out.

That comes from the top down. Trying to burry it even if it isn’t in the public domain almost sends the message the club condone it.

Very well put. its a proven fact that alcohol affects you for days after consumption, if you have an excessive amount then the effect is longer lasting. You are not then training as you should which sort changes your team mates, the club and the people that will be paying to watch you perform as an elite athlete.

A lad I known was sent on one of those alcohol awareness courses and they said a big drinking session can still be in your system four days after the session. Usually players get one or two days off. So by the time days three and four are upon them they are training with alcohol (and whatever else they’ve taken) still in their system. That’s doing them no good at all. Even if it’s only once a month or twice a season, it’s not doing them any good and will set them back.

This is obviously aside from any abusive, arrogant or intimidating language or behaviour that’s been seen by the Tomkins lads here. It may well be that some rugby league players might be perfect athletes to the 99.9th% but still be s. But I’d bet we’d see a hell of a lot less of it if the drinking/party culture for days off is eradicated from game.

Rugby League needs to grow up and realise we are nearly in the 2020s. It’s not 1978 or even 1998 anymore. Our players shouldn’t be looking at how previous generations of rugby league players or even the lager louts of the NRL live their lives as their benchmark of how to be rugby league players. They should be seeking out the likes of Cooper Cronk go about their professionalism, or even someone like Ed Clancy.

Look. It may have happened whenever but end of the day Wigan have dealt with it transparently unlike other small time clubs.

Regards

King James

Only because it made its way into the public domain.

Absolutely. And if they had swept it up? Nothing would have happened. Happy days. Makes you wonder what else has been covered up...

That's your opinion, not a fact.

It's more likely the case that, of the two parties, the two dumb players were more likely to offer hush-money than Ian Lenagan (just weigh those two possibilities up for a moment, and think about it).

In which case, the video has indeed only come out last night - when the barmaid, or her boyfriend or whoever, finally made it public - and the club, having not originally realised how serious this incident was, responded very quickly.

If normally respectable posters like you try to turn it into a 'truth' that the club was covering something up here - when there is no hard evidence of that - then you are actively damaging Wigan RL.

Has this barmaid let on whether or not she took the money to delete the video, and if so, why the video then found its way into the public domain?