Sam signed a 5 year deal two years ago and the rumours are he will leave at the end of this season. If he then stays at NZW for two years and returns to the UK his old contract may still have a clause in it whereby he will return to us.
Besides that, if there is a 5 year contract then one would deduce that Wigan hold his RL registration for that period. As he would have one year remaining then he can't go anywhere else. Certainly not after the Harris/Bradford/Leeds debacle.
The contracts may be renegotiated but if Wigan are holding his registration then that is a massive hold on his future for the one year.
I do feel this is the reason IL is allowing Sam to go now rather than in a years time when after his two years away the registration would have expired.
It will be good to listen to IL giving his reason for these decisions when he finally does speak about the matter.
I do have the feeling when he does enlighten us it will make a great deal more sense than we ever imagined.

No no no, string him up now!

The problem I have Dave is that you seem to have made your mind up without anything other than a strong rumour and no detail to go off.

I will agree though if Sam goes this year with nothing other than a mediocre transfer fee, I will agree IFL will have made a mistake.

Until we get some more detail I can only deal with what we do know the details of and I do not think he has thus far put a foot wrong in relation to the major decisions that have been made.

I am not sure what you mean. Everyone is posting on the assumption he is leaving. I think we have all given up prefacing everything with "If he leaves..." but not because we have decided it's a done deal. It's just got tedious doing so.



Fair enough but my view can be summed up as given the contract he signed he should not be leaving at the end of this season period and if he does, any sweeteners IL can pull out of the hat should be treated with scepticism given Sam's contract was in itself such a sweetener that will have proved worthless. I am also sceptical of deals done re Hock and Mossop returning simply because statements about players futures with Wigan are already to be taken with a large grain of salt IMO.

The wider issues of contracts have been done to death in the past already but if Sam does go at the end of this season because of his special contract IL will have a lot of explaining to do IMO. And I don't mean announcing he's returning in two years or we signed someone else. Rather given you can you say one thing and do another why anyone (players included) should believe anything said again.

You never know he may not leave and 11 pages in this and 17 pages in the Sam thread will have been giving IL a right laugh. We can then argue about poor communication from the club! [size=50and before anyone goes off on ne that is meant as a light hearted comment.[/size

Do fans not find it odd the both Wane (pre-season) and IL (season) have been virtually pushing Sam out the door and alerting anybody / everybody that Sam is available. Sam has been the only one following his agreement and denying any transfer.

Do fans not find it odd that Mrs Wane would accompany Mrs Tomkins Snr to NZ to check out living accommodation?

The deal to the best of my knowledge went through some time ago. Wigan attempted to gag the NZ Warriors until after the CC Final when I presume we will have a stage managed announcement with some positive news to limit adverse reaction to the VERY bad news.

Does anybody seriously still believe Sam is not leaving Wigan at the end of this season? A second Tomkins leaving with Sam has been mentioned this week. It may be Logan or it may be Joel.

I must have been out of the country when this happened.

Not according to the numerous times when you posted since pre season and throughout this season. Get me the details of your six month holiday. Must have been a fantastic offer

Use the power of google to get yourself up to speed Andrew.

Indeed I was only away for two weeks and I bet I'm one of many who has no idea what you're talking about.

It's fair to say that this board is far more challenging than other Wigan sites when people make things up to suit whatever their agenda is this week.

Was going o put the clapping emoticon but was worried you may think I was accusing you of being a "Happy clapper"!

Oh dear

Every forum is similar. None are better or worse than others. Rlfans was, sometimes still is derailed by trolling primarily from away supporters baiting other club supporters. The staff here (not you Andrew) have done a great deal to clean that aspect up.

I visit a forum to debate / read intelligent informed opinions. So the likes of Jon H, Dave O Et Al bring me to a site.

My reputation is based on the exact opposite of your statement and if you want to pretend you never read statements accessible to one and all in the media and then make purile insinuations about whether they exist and/or the motives behind comments then all you are achieving is making yourself look rather silly.

Sometimes fans seem oblivious to the truth and prefer not to face the truth. Many people are like that across society regarding far more important issues than sport. Ignorance is bliss.

Anything I say anywhere is incredibly well sourced and rarely wrong (nobody is perfect), never made up. You are running a thread today re Preccy retiring that I have stated several weeks ago BUT I daresay you knew that already.

And so it begins.

Desperately trying to get this back and on topic I'm sure those who makes statements like



will be able to back it up with evidence?

If he goes early and the club do not announce this happened because he broke his contract forbidding him to speak to other clubs then the only reasonable conclusions are either that the club instigated it or it didn't simply knock back any bids that came in.

Whether that equates to "and alerting anybody / everybody that Sam is available" is a pretty moot point IMO. It would be very annoying if the club did instigate it but only marginally less so than if they sold him due to receiving a bid.

It's not a "moot point", it doesn't equate to it at all.

Until such time as we know something official, people are making things up and trying to push them as facts.

This board is going to explode when the announcement is made

i hope I'm on holiday when it does happen

All Mod leave has been cancelled.

whos handing out the prozac?

I resign

I was talking about the outcome not the speculation. If he goes early and it wasn't set in motion by him breaking his contract it doesn't really matter that much if the club decided to sell him off its own bat or due to a bid. Both will be poor decisions IMO with one only marginally less bad than the other.

I'm on leave 20th July to 4th Aug.

I can only speculate like everyone else, unlike others I won't claim this to be fact.

We don't know for sure that Sam is in talks with anyone, all the talk in the media is that he is. Do some of you actually believe IL is pushing him out of the club? Unless the club is going bust (frim what i understand we are financially secure) why would IL actively look to sell him?

Consider this as a possibilty: Sam signed a contract preventing him from talking to NRL/Union for 3 years. Strange statement, he signed a 5 year deal so can't talk to anyone for 4 1/2 years without Wigan's permission. Re word it to say after 3 years Sam and his advisors have permission to instigate a move. Now after 18 months NZ warriors contact Wigan with an offer for Sam. What does IL do? Say p*** off or speak to Sam and say we have had an offer, what are your thoughts. Probably the latter is the right way to run a club whether you like it or not. The same thing was probably done at Hull KR with Green and Taylor. I didn't hear anyone complaining then.

Put yourself in Sam's position. In 2 weeks time he could end up with a Carreer ending injury. You have to take these oportunities when you can otherwise you may never have one again.

Pure speculation of course but I doubt IL or Sam instigated the move but once an offer was made IL had a choice to make. Can't say I'm over the Moon about it but I do understand the position all parties find themselves in. Wigan are a bug enough club to rebuff any offers from anyone in SL. If it were any SL club we were in discussions with I would have a very different opinion.

And we all know who the is the main person for stirring things up and pushing them as facts if it has anything to do with IL.

Blimey are you sure you're on the right site?

Your post seems remarkably well though out, balanced, plausible and also sensible.

Not the sort of stuff that usually appears on here at all!!!

Sorry, maybe I've been away from Wigan too long.

Sam's a dispicable traitor, IL doesn't give a **** about Wigan and just wants to make money. Is that better

.

Going back to reality, what you have to do as an owner and want you want to do for your Carreer as a professional player are often very different to us fans point of view, essentially for us it's a hobby, one a lot of us care about passionately but still a hobby.

No, what normally follows, especially if following anything remotely deemed anti IL, is a barrage of posts asking you to stick to the facts. Strange it hasn't happened in this case, don't you think?