Sam has signed with NIKE

Quite a big deal for an RL player in the country

Offiah, Davies and Robinson are the only names I am aware of who have had individual deals with NIKE in the past.

Offiah has some billboards (your hand cant touch what your eyes cant see) and Davies had some ads in RL press

A NIKE deal is a massive thing especially if they promote the individual

Good on Sam

Meh, it's no Gillete

Does individual sponsorship count on the cap ?

Depends on the details. The rule is that if it's not related to his Wigan contract it doesn't count, as it didn't in Scully's case with Gillette (Which was because of his role with GB RL). Hard to see how it's not related, but I don't suppose it's a major issue as most of his salary is off cap anyway.

Good on him.

But it must annoy the rest of the Wigan players. It just seems like the club is hell beant on getting Sam as much money as possible, like it's some Blue Peter fund raising totaliser.

If NIKE approach the the club and the player then whats the problem. Im sure the other players are not that fussed either. Sam is the face of Rugby League at the moment, so fair play to him

If NIKE had any dealings with the club themselves, it would probably get them into trouble on the cap side of things. For it not to count they've got to demonstrate it's not related to his contract with Wigan.

I tell you what though, his agents will be picking up League players left, right and centre. You can't argue with the work they've done so far.

Seems a good way to get around the cap, we either have it or we don't. We cannot allow some clubs to circumvent it, otherwise why bother.

Great stuff. He should be the face of RL in this country.

Yup. It'll be interesting to see if he still walks away after 3 years even with all this extra cash and publicity.

If he does, then it proves the cap changes and efforts to help promote his brand aren't the way forward.

All we need now is for Sam to give RL a decent shout out during his inevitable post-match interview this Saturday and he'll have done more to publicise our sport this week than the RFL have done in the past 10 years



In all seriousness I'm pleased for him. He deserves all the recognition and accolades he gets, because he's a very skilful RL player. Potentially one of the best this country has ever produced.

Not really, they aren't stupid enough to ask him those questions. The game is on Sky anyway isn't it? So it's not like it'll be a massive audience. His presence benefits Union most as League people will be watching the game when they wouldn't normally have done so, him being there won't make people watch League.

Very very poor attempt by your standards Saddened. 2/10

Nah, it should be the amazingly talented Jamie Foster.

So Tomkins advocates child labour? This is a disgrace.

His agents are fantastic. Spoke to one of them recently and he's extremely helpful and seems to know what he's doing.

I'd imagine that they'll have a massive catalogue of RL players during the next few years.

Which in itself is a big worry, as they are agents who specialise in 'identifying Rugby League talent to make the move to Rugby Union'.

Is there a link for this?

He's boasting about it on Twitter currently I believe.

in that case it might that he has just been given a free pair of trainers at a JJB

Well yeah but who says they don't want to build a catalogue of rugby league players who want to stay in league.

I'm sure they don't really care where the money comes from as long as it's coming their way. But in reality moving to Union is always going to be the more lucrative option, then NRL with SL last.

True

this is good!

We need brands like Nike and Adidas in our sport.

Think this what happened with Eastmond, I reckon he was guided to the agents lucrative option.

I think he's got the wrong sponsor in Nike, maybe some sponsorship from Pampers would have been more appropriate the way his bottom fell out against the Aussies last week.