Can't blame the lad. Only has one career so he has to make the most of it. The higher profile international game is the real difference. I expect Sam will follow at the end of this year as well.

Nobody is bigger than the club, if you dont want to be here good riddance.

God bless the salary cap, no wonder we are and always will be a minority sport.

Is it money or the case he gets the chance to play International Rugby in front of 80,000 people and get the subsequent media attention?

Personally, I think the fact that the second he puts pen to paper he becomes an instant millionare may be the deciding factor.

Judging by his interview in March its the money. He said you have to look at someone being offered 2/3 times as much in union and understand why people will move

I'm no big fan of Wigan, and I do support the principles behind the salary cap, but when such a massive club cannot keep their best young talent then questions need to be asked and answered.

Regardless which club you support, this potential move can only be bad news for our game.

Lomax, Gaskell, Sam all will be next, the Salary Cap has killed Rugby League. No superstars will ever play RL for a full career in this country again as long as we have this rule, and as long as this continues the mediocrity of Super League will get worse than it already is.

Me & a friend were discussing the whole "when will Joel & Sam bugger off to RU" topic after both signed their new 5 years contracts. The way he saw it was now they've signed they'll stay until the end of the contracts then go, my take was wigan gave them new contracts fully expecting them to go within a pretty short timeframe & were just protecting their investment by making sure they got a decent return on them.

Start by getting rid of these two clowns




This whole debacle wouldn't be an issue if we had one man back in charge at Red Hall



Someone who loves the game as much as we fans do and would do his upmost to help all clubs prevent RU slowly bleeding Super League dry of successful youth academy products by the amount of money they can offer in comparison to our Salary Cap crippled sport.

This.

If all of this is true I'll be very disappointed. If we continue losing our young players like this how much of a future does our game have?

Of course money plays a large part, but who the hell really wants to play in a recognized international match at Leigh fecking Sports Village in front of 5000 when you can play in London, Paris, South Africa, Argentina in front of guaranteed sell-outs and get column inches in the national press...

Once you get past the Grand Final and Challenge Cup (which JT has one in the last 2 years) this game offers our players absolutely naff all...