scum, should never let him walk back in after his disgusting behaviour towards the Dogs and NRL. All his bleating about how unfair it was he was "only" getting paid $500k and he had the right to walk out on his contract, club and game. He is an injury prone over hyped pond life 2nd rower ffs, and they want to pay him $800k after spitting in the face of the game? Gallop should for once show some balls and stick by his "never play in the NRL again" statements he made at the time.

Well said

Benji Marshall had 4 shoulder ops early in his career, sbw injured his knees a few times but I don't think he ever injured his shoulders!

It's hilarious that people still believe that there's any loyalty in professional sport. It's all about the money. The interest generated by SBW's return outweighs any negativity. Regardless how passionately you follow the sport, the NRL is a business.

No problem with players moving codes for more money, they have a short career and deserve whatever they can get, massive problem with someone signing a 5 year contract and walking out on it within a year blaming the club and game for their decision. He's just a money grabbing grub and the publicity is worth about 4 weeks then he will just be another, very well paid, pforward with dickie shoulders and knees. In his 5 years in the NRL not once did he play a full season, and he will be 28 if he comes back.

Wider issue is the financial clout of the NRL and how this should really end the player drain. Especially in England where youngsters like Ashton and Eastmond would imo have gone to Aus rather than yawnion

Still not going to be able to compete with RU even with a $7mill salary cap. French RU and the ARU can sign $1million+ contracts, NRL won't get that high even for the very best players, avg RL players like Ashton, Gower, Eastwood etc won't attract big RL $'s that they can get in RU even with the increased cap. What it will see is a reduction in the avg NRL player or players coming to the end of their careers from the NRL to SL and more English players moving to the NRL imo.

Regardless of ones view of SBW's career choices, that's a quality rant; anything that opens with the word 'scum' is unlikely to disappoint, and this was no exception.

I don’t think we can know the minds of these players and whether they would be prepared to move their lives to the other side of the world at such a young age

Also, Eastmond was a full international when he moved but Ashton wasn’t – I suspect that the NRL clubs wouldn’t have spent the same amount on him than the Union clubs were willing to pay whether they had the cash or not

Not sure if it will ever end but for a while to come, we will continue to lose players to Union in this country... and we will also continue to replace them with quality youngsters playing the better game

I'd not want to clean dog muck up in a local park but if they offered me double what I'm on now I'd certainly do it!

Think it would be difficult not to especially with the rise in profile that Union also offers. Let's face it there are a lot of fame hungry kids out there and RL is hardly going to get you noticed in the big smoke!