[urlhttp://www.smh.com.au/rugby-league/league-news/warriors-seal-deal-to-sign-tomkins-20130622-2opac.html[/url

Massive loss for the SL if this is true.

Bobbie Goulding tweeted the same over the weekend

Massive loss to the super league

It's not like his presence has attracted a global SL competition sponsor this season or anything.

Massive loss for Wigan, but I think the rest of us will cope!

Meh.

Hands up everyone who bought a season ticket for a SL club this year just so they could watch Sam Tomkins.

Be interested to hear why he's gone to a relative rugby league backwater rather than one of the bigger Sydney sides that were supposedly in for him.

$$$$$$

Maybe he's got a "Warriors" tattoo that he doesn't want to change?

Not ideal for Super League, but perhaps not bad news for England. I think Tomkins has spoken about wanting to be as good as Billy Slater. Not sure he can achieve that here. He also has a pretty full medal collection from Super League (Mr Offiah's mis-use of the odd plural notwithstanding). I'd rather see him in the NRL than in Union.

No chance we can change the silly thread title I suppose?

Gotta be the $$$$$'s on offer.

He won't improve much being coached by someone out of his depth and who is realistically a SL level coach.

We always have one silly thread each week.

I usually call it the "Obsessed With Wigan" thread.

Only one?

Yep... just one this week.

The desperately obsessive but ineffective rhinos trolls from this board are way too busy fighting off the desperately obsessive but ineffective invasion of a few Huddersfield trolls to be concerning themselves with too many desperately obsessive wigan threads this week. They aren't capable of multitasking anyhow.

I dunno, you're still having a go. Credit to you for that.

Big loss to the league - yet another top quality player leaving. The standard of competition is slipping at an alarming rate losing star players is hardly going to improve matters.

As for crowds it isn't the season ticket holders who will come to watch Tomkins it is the floating supports who - most likely - will be brought along by their kids who do want to see Sam Tomkins.

So i take it you will be looking forward to the highly likely scenario of us playing Wigan 3 times in a month come september? will be more than one then

I'm not obsessed by Wigan.

I'd want to see some pretty robust market research data to back that up.

Are you applying this just to Wigan fans? I can't imagine there are scores of kids going along to watch other teams when Wigan come to town saying "Dad, Dad, we HAVE to go and watch Sam Tomkins play on Friday night, can we can we pleeeeeeease." Will we see a real drop in Wigan's attendances next year if this is true? My feeling would be that we won't unless it makes a huge difference to their win ratio.

You never specified who or what the "desperately obsessive but ineffective trolls" were obsessed with. I would think trolls who obsessively bang any particular (metaphorical, before Tykes/Rhinos no1 gets ideas) drum would qualify.

Concur with that.

I was planning to attend the Leeds/Wigan game earlier this season but didn't bother once I'd heard Tomkins wasn't playing. The regular season product ain't worth anywhere close to £20 but it's just about a palatable price to pay when there's one player on show who is exciting to watch and has huge potential to become a world class player.

Doesn't do us any favours heading the thread like that. Not a good day for Super League.

No but you are obsessed with coming on here and attempting to get Leeds fans to rise to your Bait.Why you do it?I don't know.I would have thought you would had enough by now

Leeds have plenty of potential world class youngsters waiting in the wings, so I'm surprised GH hasn't tried to get NRL clubs to take proven SL winners from leeds.

Shouldn't have to play Wigan 3 times. Just the once if Leeds finish 5th again but hopefully not in the Final because Leeds never beat Wigan in Finals.

I remain hopeful Leeds can still secure their coveted 5th place on the ladder and play Wigan just once in the semis, despite the difficult task of having to lose at least 5 out of their last 9 regular season fixtures against mainly whipping boy SL rabble opposition whilst ensuring they all appear like genuine losses as opposed to games being thrown. More injuries would certainly help to facilitate the perception of a genuine 5th placed finish rather than one which has been purposely engineered.

There must be some mistake.
Tomkins was only recently berating the practice of hiring foreign players.

That's a strange one really. When I was a kid (back in the 1950's) we would go to the Wigan home games, but when they were away we would sometimes pick a Wire or Saints game to go to depending on who they were playing, to watch the likes of Fox, Gunney, Whiteley, Jones, Murphy, Bevan, Vollenhoven etc.

In the 1960's my girlfriend (now wife) would often go to Saints on a Friday night and then Wigan (home and away) on a Saturday.

We also went to Salford to watch David Watkins make his debut.

I may be wrong. Some market research would sway me. I just can't believe in this day and age (when those players would be readily viewable on Sky anyway) that the number of people turning up to see a visiting player would be a significant chunk of the audience.