Why? If he's that important pay it. If not, let him go. Wigan have just signed a 37 year old overseas player from a foreign club. Don't come crying about the cap preventing you keeping academy products after that.

The rumour is that he will be on £400,000... Can you see why Wigan don't offer him more?

My worry is that we keep saying "it's just one player, they'll be replaced" and it becomes the norm.

Will this 400k be payed by the club and the RFU?

That was in the build up to the CC Final at Wembley. The team travelled down to London on the Thursday and trained at Saracens on the Friday. Teams can train where they like as far as I'm aware so being "allowed" to do so doesn't come into it

Vast majority will be the RFU. The notion that Harlequins RU would be paying anyone 400k is extremely amusing.

I thought the same myself.
400k for a untested player sounds extreme anyway.

If Wigan think he's worth holding on to, they'll have to beat Saracens offer (and I doubt the 'rumoured' figure) and reduce their spending elsewhere to accomodate that arrangement, perhaps by disinvesting in one or more expensive imports and looking to their Academy lads for the next young prodigy. Isn't that what the cap is for?

And this 400k will be over how many years?

1

Any actual source for any of this yet, beyond the rumour in The Sun? I can't see the the RFU or any club paying 400k.

If he does go, it's bad news. We'll get over it, but if the options are losing him from the sport, or keeping him, I know which I'd choose. Our game needs to build depth and this drip effect is denting that effort. Farrell, Hape and Vainikolo type players are no great loss in the grand scheme of things. Ashton, Eastmond, Tomkins type players are, and it's not so much that Union's moneymen have ramped up efforts to sign league players, they've just changed their strategy. I don't think we can afford to turn a blind eye to that if we're serious about improving our game.

That's wild altogether, for someone untested in union whowasn't even fully developed in league to go into the top bracket of Premiership rugby earners seems a bit far fetched. Unless union really does have a few screws loose.

£400k is approx 10% of the Union salary cap. They wont be paying that to an lad who has never played the game in his life.

Ashton was on about £140k from what I hear - which seems a more reasonable amount for Joel Tomkins, that Wigan *should* be able to compete with.

But Ashton was only on 12k at Wigan when he left, so the difference was huge.

From the figures being banded about, Joel may well be on 80k at Wigan so you'd expect the RU buggers to have to throw more money at him to persuade him over to the dark side.

its not just about wages from the club and the RFU its about the money he can earn from sponsors and other avenues.

There is no way Ashton was on £12k when he was at Wigan.

We all know he'll be in the England yawnion squad before he's even played 5 games too.

There is.

That long?
Willie Mason played for the Baa,Baa's BEFORE he played for his club side.

Can't we just pick 15 guys to go play on their England side so they will leave us alone for a while.
I feel it's like when you turn up with a team and the other side has one less. You feel obliged to lend them one because they aren't a big enough team to compete.

The league cap is what, 1.4 million? The figure being bounded about is 400k a season for Joel. Now even if it was half that, there is no way any Super Duper League team can spend 200k on one player with the limitations imposed by the salary cap.

He was still on a youth contract. There were offers on the table from Wigan and Northampton and, with the RFU's help, Northampton blew the Wigan offer right out of the water. You have to balance out a player's value with how much of your cap space you're willing to give up to keep them. Nobody in RL thinks that Joel Tomkins is worth a full quarter of your salary cap. No player is. If it was a level playing field financially I don't think there'd be any debate about what Joel would do, but it isn't

Good.

The Indeendent referred to the "rumour" today and implied JT had pulled out of the 4 Nations because of it.

Press conf in 2 mins. We may find out more.