No, it's wigans responsibility to stick to the salary cap, the same one everybody else has, and to keep a competitive side.
If they have too many players earning too much money they have to sell them or pay them less, if someone else then chooses to pay them more than Wigan can, that's business.

Very difficult for any sane or rational person to argue with any of that; that won't stop plenty of Wigan fans mind you, who will be calling for exemption from the cap for the whole Tomkins family.

The rumour around Wigan are that he has been offered around 400K a season. Am sure NO team in Super League could afford to pay him that much.

They could pay him that but as I said they would then have spend the rest of the cap wisely. We managed to put a squad together on less than 1 million last year so we would have had plenty of room to offer him 400k if we had wanted to.

I very much doubt he is on that much a season. I'm sure Eastmond is on less than half that. One attraction about Union is that even if your initial contract isn't that much (in Union terms) you have the potential to earn a lot more with future contracts. Of course all that depends on how you adapt to the game. The time has come to accept that we are down the food chain regarding finances compared to Union. League players are seen as cheap gambles by Union clubs, everyone’s looking for the next Jason Robinson. This in part is due to the salary cap that is imposed on the Premiership teams. A lot of Premiership clubs just can't compete with the money rich French teams so they have to start looking outside of the game for next best thing. I expect the raid on league talent to continue for the near future, not that we can complain, we did our fair share of raiding Union in the past.

Losing Eastmond, Tomkins and it seems Sam Tomkins is a tragedy for the game.

It sends a message that any young League player with a bit of talent can only aim towards union. We will become a feeder code.

The international pool of players available to our code is tiny, there are 3 who will walk away and leave us so much weaker. Until we get a credible International comp then our code will always struggle.

I am all for the salary cap, but I think clubs should be allowed to protect home grown products and exceptions made for Academy products, as long as a club can prove they are able to support this without getting into financial dificulty.

It's a big shame to see him go. It's also a reflection of the low skill levels in areas of the dark side's game, i.e. defence. You have to accpet that Joel Tompkins has simply taken a better job offer. If you were in your 20's and were offered double the money for doing the same job, what would you do? Loyalty dissapeared a long time ago. We raided the Union ranks heavily in the past and can have no gripe of them doing the same to us. The answer has always been the same, support the amateur game and develop our own junior talent through the academy system.
For all those Whinos who started the booing of Sam Tompkins after the Maguire incident, if/ when he goes, you and other booers are quite simply "MORONS".

I could live with only 50% of the club trained players salaries counting towards the cap, but if the figures being bandied around are any where near correct I don't think this would prevent players from switching codes.

The levels that RU clubs are able to pay would mean that RL would effectively have to scrap the salary cap.
That shouldn't happen, so unfortunately Wigan will have to work round it as best they can.
RL becoming a feeder code to RU is IMO scare tactics by wigan/wigan fans who wish for there club to be treat differently, or for them to manouver (at least) the salary cap higher, this would turn other clubs into feeder clubs for the larger clubs (such as wigan), even more so than now, and that is why it shouldn't be allowed as it isn't in the best interest of SL or RL in general.
Unfortunately when you have two strains of a similar game, the highest paid will attract the better or greedier players, wether that ultimately does that game any long term good is open to debate.
Being a fan of a smaller club unable to keep its best players, and i'm sure other clubs are in a similar and worse situation, i have little sympathy for wigan.
Its market forces and the real world, unfortunately it will lessen our chances of national team strength, but that nothing in comparison to the damage the rfl have done at that level, so they ought not to cry wolf either.

Hardly a tragedy - there are other bright young things already emerging to fill the boots of those players switching codes and there always will be; this is only a tragedy in Wigan and if the Wigan club felt the same way, they'd pay Tomkins more than their Union counterparts were offering and that would solve the problem.

In reality, very few RL players are lost to Union - certainly fewer than were lost from Union to League when the boot was on the other foot.

Don't blame him, i'd do the same

Hardly think Joel is the loss of the century, at second row we have others of a similar or better standard and the fact he plays at centre says more about RL in this country than about how good he is. Sam is a different matter i'll grant you that but if he's so great pay him more and others less. Market forces as others have said.
Eastmond had one good season and didn't kick on this year so as it stands we'll never know how good he could of been unlike Sam

Fact is, Joel Tomkins is not worth 400k. The salary cap in the Aviva Premiership is so much higher they can afford to spend so much. That does not mean we should raise our cap.