I really, really hope there is nothing to this.

If we can't pay enought to keep players like Tomkins in RL at least for the initial part of their career - I accept in the long run the lure of RU cash and international prospects to a star player will be very difficult to counter but we should be able to pay real prospects a decent wage to make the RU switch too much of a risk for them to take at a young age and ensure that we can at least watch our star backs for the first few years of their "rugby" careers - then there is no point in professional RL anymore and we all might as well give up watching it. The declining standards in SL are bad enough without our young talent getting snapped up by RU.

Exactly it would be different from the situation with Chris Ashton as he is still contracted at Wigan & so would require a fee.

I would extend his contract beyond 2010 this season and offer his current wages + whatever Cameron Phelps is on.

We can't let any of our promising young stars contracts run out till the last year we need to have them contracted constantly and extend there contract while they're still under contract. This should then help stop Union poaching our youngsters, they may still sign but it will be our choice not theirs.

One's made an offer to take him on loan.

cough cough... chris ashton (wasn't he offered 140k??)

EXACTLY......the RFL dont know what they're doing....some other idiot from the RFL was champagning the idea of the communist cap tonight on GMR and how great the game now is as 9 Teams are now spending full cap!! ERR... reality check mate....if 9 teams where spending 3m or so then maybe....but all we have done is hold back or top teams and stagnated the game to wakefield and castlefords level were you can still afford to spend full cap even only pulling gates of 6k!!!

The danger is that the 'saviour' as it is talked about (CC) of rugby league IMO is what dangers RL existance and progression the most at the moment, when you have an RU cap of 4 mil and silly money in french RU which means that we'll end up in the same position we're in now media wise, yet we'll probably not even have the better product as an arrow in our bow in 5-10 years because as you say all the decent young tallent wil have buggered off and we'll be left with second rate no marks playing our game (just look at the current England side for a perfect example....our weakest international team in 40 years IMO)

Why is everyone shocked

It was aonly a matter of time before the money men came knocking..I have not been getting to excited about seeing him play for wigan.Because i believe he wont be here to much longer..the money is just to good in RU i'm afraid

I hope there is nothing in this for the sake of the game. I would like to see sam take on kyle eastmond and wheeler from saints for the next decade. That said, there are very few people on here who would turn down £120k at any age, esp. when you're not getting regular first team action. Times are tough and there arn't many superleague teams who wouldn't have a 23/4 year old sam tompkins back when he is £360k richer. And as for paying a fee for him, whats that against union money?

Even more worrying is the fact that the decent players won't even consider RL in the first place.

Some of us have been saying for years that the CC will destroy our game, take away the talent that is there, and deter new talent from taking up the game.

We have been met with a tirade of abuse, accusing us of overreaction and scare mongering.

Yet, as predicted:

The GB international side is a joke
The standard of RL in SL is a joke
Any half decent back is "circled" by RU

Still, maybe this is scare mongering again eh? Let's all stick our heads in the sand and praise the CC. At least the league is "fair" eh?

We can all stand on the same level of the deck, as we watch the ship sink slowly into the sea.

If there is any truth in this then.

Northampton BOG OFF!!!!

Maybe instead of Noble spouting rubbish about the RFL granting special dispensation to superleague clubs to go out and spend big money on Union players he should be asking them to grant us some sort of way of keeping our own youngsters!!!

He talked about signing a big name Union player on a big deal yet with only say 50k counting towards the cap. He'd be better off touting the idea around where any youngster that comes through your system can only cost a maximum of 'x' amount of pounds on your salry cap with the rest being waived.