I'm sure this decision, which has hardly been a secret, will hopefully give others more of a chance to secure a spot. While you should always play your strongest team, if the lads going others should get more game time. And I'm sure that will already have been factored in.

Lets not lose sight of the real culprit in this, the lack of money in Super League. You can easily blame your favourite target, the club, IL, the player, agents, the FRL.... But it all comes down to the fact that there is not as much money in this game, compared to the alternatives.

This was my stance at one time but the return of Joel and Mossop proves the worth of keeping relations sweet between the player, his agent nd the club. Sad to see him go but I'd rather hold out hope for his return and play him on merit just as if he was staying.

No point freezing him out as long as his attitude is right. At the end of the day you can only keep looking to tomorrow for so long and as much as it'd be good to get Manfredi plenty of experience we have things to win in 2015.

As much as I think it's a little poor from Burgess he's one of our best two wingers so he plays.

I think you make a good point but there is a difference in that most players in that position have the opportunity to transition from a part time to a full time career.

But going from a rumoured £8k per year (I don't know what his new contract offer from Wigan was) to probably in excess of £100K is the equivalent of going from part time to full time too.

With regards to the person who said he could hang around for 3 years and then go. Who's to say he couldn't get a career ending injury in that time or a career altering injury (David Vaeiliki) in that time also?

It's a short career and I wish him the best providing his attitude is right for the remaining year of his contract with us.

To be fair. I imagine in the days of Schofield, Crooks and Davies, the NRL wasn't readily available to UK TV viewers as it is now. Nowadays they're not really 'out of sight' at all.

The increase in money isn't the reason I made the point. The point is that a player with the opportunity to move from Championship to Super League has an opportunity to play sport for a living which would be the dream of most young men. Mixing two jobs may also carry logistical difficulties.

I'm not being naïve, believe me I know for some people money is the be all and end all. But in this situation I would have hoped that things like loyalty and gratitude would be bigger motivators.

As for the prospect of career ending injury, you can't possibly plan your career with the fear that this will happen. The chances are slim in the scheme of things. It's like you or I saying we want to travel the world in a week because we might get run down by a car or keel over at any moment.

That is because it is not remotely the same thing.

Going form being an amateur to full time pro is not the same as a full time pro moving from one club (or competition) to another.

I was just going to make the same point. I don't know what Burgess ambitions are beyond his Roosters contract but he'd better just skip playing for them at all and move directly onto that in case he gets injured playing for them.

I agree but the frustration is there doesn't seem to be any ambition to increase the amount of money in the UK game.

The "cost" of running an elite RL side is whatever the NRL salary cap is. If you can't pay that or at least pretty close to it you will always lose your best players to them.

In the long run this is not sustainable because if players as young as Burgess go then the old adage "we have had players leave and have survived" won't work any more as the best of the replacements will follow them out of the door.

Faffing about with the structure of the league and spreading the available money as thinly as we do does nothing to close the gap.

Well he's going now so no good dwelling on it, let's hope the 4 players they are talking to all sign, they're the ones we should be concentrating on....especially Hampshire!

Having just watched a lot of the NRL last season courtesy of Premier sports I am far from convinced that he will actually get a regular game for the Roosters. Whilst he is an exciting talent for sure, he makes a lot of mistakes. I think at one stage last season he made the most errors in Super League. Now, obviously he is young and should improve but I think that the NRL is a much less forgiving place to make errors. It could be a disastrous move for his career, though not his bank balance. (Although if he was on so little to begin with his Wigan salary would have been increased tenfold, not bad for a twenty year old).

Surely better advice would have been to do what Sam did. Give us five years and break all the try scoring records you can then go over as a star, not an inexperienced kid who has won nothing.

As to whether he should be picked now. You pick the best/most in-form 13 (17) available. However if Dom Manfredi gets his chance and takes it I would expect him to keep his place whereas if Burgess was staying that dynamic might change.

I'm genuinely delighted about Ryan Sutton. Waney must have high hopes for him. He seems to play without any fear at all. His first carry last Sunday he looked at Fuifui and went straight at him. Impressive.

Obviously it's a shame, but good luck to the lad. It's not the end of the world, if we are honest wingmen are probably the easiest to replace especially in our team where most of their tries come from basically catching and putting it down.

Let's not forget Manfreddi and Burgess were both being spoken about as competitors to replace Richards and I am sure he can do an excellent job for us.

I think some people think Wigan is the centre of the rugby universe. It's not. Talk of freezing him out etc is embarrassing. If he is playing well and earning his spot he needs to play. Manfreddi will get plenty of chances next year as well. There is no point cutting your nose off to spite your face.

The simple fact is the NRL is where any player with ambition to be the best they can be needs to go.

As an Internationalist over club affiliation I think it is a great move and helps England move closer to that all important series win.

Treat him poorly this year and we will never see him at Wigan again, we may not anyway but no need to burn our bridges.

Personally I would also love to see one of our young halves go to the NRL sooner rather than later as without a competative England side and credible International game we can never get more money and recognition into the game and this short term farming of our junior talent and inferior comp will be a long term problem.

There's a lot to this. Even with the omni-shambles that is Red Hall, a stronger international team can only benefit the game in the UK. The fact that his move is all over the BBC this morning may only be a result of their assumption that he's related to the other Burgess, but it's the sort of news that has to be pounced on and bigged-up by the the RFL (who's media team are based in Salford Quays anyway): and thus keep the game in the general conciousness.

We've an up-hill struggle this year anyway to get any air-time, but bickering & sniping at the lad for wanting to earn a wage won't help anyone. I'd love for all our kids to have the same "one-club" attitude of, say, SOL, who I suspect may well go on to be a stand-out coach/manager. But they're few & far between.

Good luck to the lad, said through gritted teeth because I'd really like to be a selfish tw*t & keep him for a while longer. But can anyone here genuinely say they'd not do exactly the same?

Players moved in both directions then as the seasons overlapped. GB were very competitive. Thanks to Micron Video all the Aussie games were available, pubs put on Aussie matches to full houses. Aussie RL magazines were on sale at Smiths. They weren't out of sight at all.