Linked to us? Sweet baby jesus, him and Hock together would make any coach tear their hair out

And then there's the threat from the NRL, as highlighted by this Aussie playerhttp://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/rugby_league/15295811.stmrl

We are at 5 minutes to midnight. Action must be taken now to put the British game on a sustainable growth path, before it is too late (perhaps it already is ).

No, we wouldn't. We wouldn't get £320k because that isn't our loss. It's what we would have paid Tomkins. An employer's loss is the cost to it of finding a new employee. There might be examples where you could point to some other loss flowing from his breach of contract, if for example the player was the star player in the team - I gave the example of a sponsor backing out of a deal because a player was no longer there, but I don't think these would apply to Joel.

The cost of training him is irrelevant. Employers can't claim normal training costs back as far as I am aware.

I think we all expect a deal to be done shortly. RU have oodles of cash and a desperate need to get the player across in a clean and quick way so they will pay a premium over what they would have to pay in litigation but people expecting over 500k are likely to be very disappointed.

There is one thing that might work in Wigan's favour and that is both RU and RL are affiliated to Sport England.

The idea of one affiliated governing body using central funds to facilitate the poaching of a player from another ought to be something the RFL complain about. I am sure RU would say they aren't using any Sport England cash to fund the move but if they have enough cash to fling at our players from central funds they don't need their Sport England grants in the first place. I doubt the RFL would even think of investigating this because quite frankly I doubt they are even remotely interested despite the warnings such as thishttp://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/rugby_league/15295811.stmrl

OK he is on about a drain to the NRL but it highlights the issues. I think it is pretty clear Wigan are doing a great job on marketing with revenues up and so on, great job with the crowd increases and lots of initiatives such the heritage day the "big one" games but the RFL need to get off their backsides and look to strart growing revenue that they can distrubute to club in the same way the RFU so.

We wont get 320k just because thats left on his contract but looking at the situation if it did go to court we could get that figure if represented correctly. I didnt really explain that very well

The training is relevent because its money and time weve invested in that player which would obviously be money burned if he just walked away. You can also play the England international and future potential card.

Apparantley court cases of this kind are different to normal working tribunal cases. Different things are taken into account. I know somebody at another sporting club who has experienced a few of these cases and he said they get very messy and usually the club losing the player can get the value of his remaining contract at least as long as they have the right legal team. He said 90% of time it doesnt get that far though because both sides end up worse off.

FWIW i doubt we will get over 500k either but iw did get that (500k) I would be pretty happy.

Maybe a few things i have said may not apply in this case considering the cases i got told about were in a same sport scenario

Like you've said about the uncertainty of the legal system though, the whole thing would be a minefield. Nobody can say for sure how the case would be viewed or how it would pan out which probably helps us because the RFU are less likely to go down that route unless absolutley necessary.

It's a bit football-esque but by holding out and selling a player for a large sum as opposed to receiving so called compensation. It could go either two ways, it would put off union clubs or league clubs would make shed loads of money, which I hope would raise the value of our game and thus an increase in the salary cap alongside other benefits.

It is probably wishful thinking by myself but it's a thought nonetheless.

Which Tuilagi? There are 7 brothers in all and apparently all play Rugby.

if you reveal who tells you then they tell you naff all in the future but from the same source Sam has no intention of leaving for the time being at least

This thread raises some interesting points that I hadn't thought about before re players contracts. To me, Wigan have a contract with tomkins, if he decides not to see out that contract then Wigan would have a case against him, and not against any future employer. An ru club may decide to pay compensation to ease the process, but I don't see any other obligation on them. For instance, Mundine walked away from rugby to be a boxer, I don't think st georges could have made a claim for compensation from his boxing manager? Similarly, if a player walks out and becomes a builder, the club couldn't claim compensation from the new employer, but could sue the player for breach of contract, probably unsuccessfully. RU may be a similar sport to ours, but legally would probably be treated no differently to bob the builder.