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SBW will not play again this year

Eels Dude

Coach
Messages
19,065
I'd like moderaters to use a bit of common sense and allow multiple threads to be started on this topic. It's going to be 45 pages long by the end of the evening and unable to follow proper discussion. It's the biggest story in league in ages and is worth more than any other threads on this forum combined. Start up a special forum instead of being bigshots and merging threads.
 

fourplay

Juniors
Messages
2,236
I'm a bulldogs fan and I can't blame SBW. Yeah he signed a contract, but a very poor contract when he was naive. 250k after tax in australia to play with the wooden spoon bulldogs team for the next FOUR years and have every action of his life scrutinised or $3 million for a 2 yr stint in France.

It's really not a hard decision.

Do you think SBW could call a press conference to announce it? He wouldn't even be able to leave the country if he did.
 
Messages
606
Nasser is a disgrace.He is NOT an accredited player manager.SBW has the right to choose a manager,but they must be accredited for the NRL to register a contract.WTF is he doing with this known rabble rouser.Dogs make Sonny their marquee signing,release every man and his dog to keep him.What a way to repay the bulldogs faith in him.:x
 
Messages
14,139
I spoke to Sonny yesterday at the Uralla Footy Show thing. Among other things he said:

Talking about being a fan of the game:
"I'm a footy head. I love watching the game and everything about it." Not enough to want to play it obviously.

On inspiring the young Uralla kids.
"I told the kids to keep trying. I never thought I'd play NRL so you never know what can happen" This one was spot on. No one knew this was going to happen.

and by far the worst on Monday night's game
"They (the Dragons) are going to be desparate after they suffered a big loss last week. We just have to stick together at the Bulldogs." Stick together? FMD.

I actually smelt a rat to some extent but I didn't know this was going to happen. I asked him if he was looking forward to the World Cup and how he reckoned the Kiwis would go against the Kangaroos. He was very coy on that matter. He looked around a bit and then said after a David Gallop trademark "aaaaaahhhh" "It'll be good, we'll go alright." He seemed completkey disinterested in answering that one and just looked away as he did so. Just the way he said it made me wonder. I actually thought maybe he was planning off-season surgery and he knew full well he wasn't going to be playing at the World Cup. Little did I know it's far more serious than that.

Disgraceful way to do things, especially after all that bullsh*t with the kids at Uralla. Why go up there and do that when he knew full well he was on a plane next morning. It was all bullsh*t. Nasser was there too. He looks like a member of the Taliban and it seems his morals and parctices are just as disgusting.
 

8Ball

First Grade
Messages
5,132
Some people were owned in this thread but come on, who would have expected such a low low low grubby dog act from the "man."
 

Glenn

First Grade
Messages
7,321
Nasser is a disgrace.He is NOT an accredited player manager.SBW has the right to choose a manager,but they must be accredited for the NRL to register a contract.WTF is he doing with this known rabble rouser.Dogs make Sonny their marquee signing,release every man and his dog to keep him.What a way to repay the bulldogs faith in him.:x

Loyalty goes out the window when the $$$$ are shoved under your nose.
 

gong_eagle

First Grade
Messages
7,655
Nasser was there too. He looks like a member of the Taliban and it seems his morals and parctices are just as disgusting.

here is a article from May 24
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/sport/nrl/story/0,27074,23748880-14823,00.html

THE quirkiness of King Khoder stepped up a notch this week with his assertion that Sonny Bill Williams could soon be playing for the All Blacks from his intended base which, we are led to believe, might well be France within a month. After being corrected and told the All Blacks do not select players outside their domestic competition, King Khoder Nasser banged on regardless, insisting that it was a "globalised world", that it was "not like we have closed borders, or any of that bulls . . .".
Here it was - an old tune being played on a different drum.
Already guiding the career of one of the most disliked athletes in Australia, in Anthony Mundine, Nasser has recently taken charge of one of the most popular, Sonny Bill Williams, and within a few short months appears to be already leading him down the same road as Mundine.
One where a man's reputation has suffered in the pursuit of financial gain.
On the evidence available, it means nothing to him that for everybody else, what he is doing with Williams amounts to nothing short of high treason.
A shameful bid to exploit Sonny Bill, a deliberate kick in the guts to rugby league.
All this from a man who can't legally do a deal with the Bulldogs because he is not an accredited player manager.
Sonny has confirmed his dispute is about money, among other things.
What are we supposed to believe? That it was only ever about money?
That Sonny Bill, who came to Sydney as a 16-year-old with barely a dollar in his pocket and is now in the first year of a five-year, $2 million contract - a multi-millionaire at 22 - is simply a body for hire?
He had us all fooled. Or maybe someone has him fooled. Nasser's crusade is simply an extension of the thinking that catapulted Mundine into one of the most polarised athletes in Australia.
Disliked by many, Nasser and Mundine reconcile their dislike by choosing to value the opinions only of the few, but ardent, supporters that surround them.
There is little question their crusade is rarely in the interests of the wider community.
"He looks at the way the system works and he believes the system doesn't necessarily work in the best interests of the athlete," says NRL marketing director and friend, Paul Kind.
"He believes that what he is doing is showing the guts to do things differently and everyone else conforms to the norm.
"It's bit of a personal crusade."
Nasser and Kind often met every few weeks to share a coffee and an idea, but have not spoken since shortly after Nasser took control of Sonny Bill.
Both realised they would inevitably venture into territory they could never agree on.
Nasser is known to sleep on the floors of expensive hotel rooms, forgoing the comfy bed nearby.
He has slept in cars, on the beach, each of them a deliberate attempt to prevent himself from becoming soft and losing his edge.
He has read Alex Haley's The Autobiography Of Malcolm X more times than, on this evidence, he has slept between warm sheets, and like many Muslims draws strength from the message.
He is a university graduate, earning an arts degree majoring in politics. Almost all who know him speak of his intelligence.
From a long line of Australian-born Lebanese Muslims, his father was once president of the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils. But he is still somewhat a loner, with a small and tight circle of friends.
Tony Mundine smacked him in the mouth somewhere in the mix of taking over Anthony's career and Anthony's conversion to Islam, but now they get along well.
His sports hero is not Mundine, as most would have it, but Zinedine Zidane, the former French soccer player who ended his career in the top-flight with a head-butt to the chest of an opponent.
He believes Sonny Bill can have a similar impact. That he is relatively unknown outside NSW and Queensland, and a few spots in New Zealand, speaks of his oversized ambition and crusade to take on The System.
When Nasser first took control of Mundine he often called trainer Johnny Lewis to invite him ringside; Lewis's response being of the two-word variety before hanging up.
"I wanted to think that it wasn't Anthony who was responsible for all those outbursts and that someone else was writing the script," Lewis says. "I saw him as behind it.
"But now, if I had a young Jeff Fenech coming through, he's the only bloke I'd trust him to."
What swayed Lewis was the way Nasser looked after fighters, beyond what he was contractually obliged to. A bonus payment here or there, something else going forward.
But Lewis does not agree with Nasser's direction or handling of Sonny Bill. Like just about everybody outside the Nasser-Mundine inner circle understands, there is a fundamental difference between an individual sport like boxing and a team sport like rugby league.
League's togetherness is its strength. The boxer must establish himself as a stand-alone act.
"He thinks he can take an individual like Anthony and work beyond the system," says Kind.
"But the cycle of sport works in a way that everybody takes benefit from everyone else. If you think you can work that system in a different way you might get outcomes, but there's always a downside. He has always thought that way for Choc (Mundine) and he is starting to think that way with Sonny Bill."
As well as Nasser's crusade against The System, many are blaming his motive for putting a gun to the head of the Bulldogs on a personal dislike of new chief executive Todd Greenburg.
Greenburg was a former executive at ANZ Stadium, and while there he had all but secured the Mundine-Danny Green fight as another showcase event.
All that was left to agree on was a few details, normalities with most stadium hirers. But Nasser wanted the stadium to pay the operating costs, such as lights, security and facilities. This is a cost always met by the hirer, who offsets the cost by keeping revenue from ticket sales.
"He's a very shrewd negotiator," says Greenburg, who declines to reveal details of the meeting for fearing of upsetting Nasser in the lead-up to this week's expected meeting about Sonny Bill.
Greenburg refused to meet the cost, so Nasser threatened to take the fight elsewhere, and Greenburg refused to be held to ransom.
The fight was held across town at the Sydney Football Stadium.
So far, Sonny Bill's only response reveals him as a naive young man.
On the one hand he claims to be a normal bloke who is simply responding to an offer well above his current salary, and who wouldn't?
But in his next breath he says he has not received an offer.
And as everybody else seems to realise, such a negotiation would be fine if Sonny Bill had not committed himself to a five-year contract - a percentage of which will be paid for all five years to his former manager Gavin Orr.
Other than to wish Sonny Bill well, Orr says nothing.
Certainly many believe that another motivation of Nasser's is to break the Bulldogs deal and put Sonny Bill into a new deal, thereby generating himself a percentage of income, but that would be to ignore his fight with The System.
Forty years ago Malcolm X waged a similar crusade, as his biography detailed and as many Muslims around the world adopted as a manifesto.
What gets overlooked is that, before his violent death, Malcolm X was preaching a different message - one of understanding and co-operation. It makes Kind's words ring all the louder.




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miguel de cervantes

First Grade
Messages
7,473
There is no way that Sonny Bill can return to live in Sydney - he would be lynched. If the Bulldogs manage to prevent him playing for Toulon I'd dare say his entire football career just flew out the window.

Dumb Sonny Bill, real dumb.
 

Red Bear

Referee
Messages
20,882
is that the face of New Zealand and Australia from the ad campaign for the world cup both gone? Or is someone else the kiwi person
 

Knight87

Juniors
Messages
2,181
If he is forced to sit out for the remaining 4 yrs of his contract, I wonder what work he'll get? Otherwise, with no flow of income coming in for those 4 yrs, it won't be looking too good for him. Could be a "going from the penthouse to the doghouse" situation.
 

JoeD

First Grade
Messages
7,056
If the Bulldogs manage to prevent him playing for Toulon I'd dare say his entire football career just flew out the window.
The bulldogs won't be able to do anything. He will play in France. Why would a french club pay any attention to what an australian court might say?
 

Eels Dude

Coach
Messages
19,065
Sonny Bill is the biggest disgrace to rugby league. I'd like to see what he would do if he's forced out of football all together. Which I hope is the case. He's done the worst case of runner and should be forced to deal with the circumstances. If he didn't like the media attention and criticism before, he's going to be in for a shock if/when he comes back to Australia.

Worst thing was being a total phony to those kids at whatever carnival the other day. That's an absolute disgrace that some of them met their idol, wanting to become the next Sonny Bill, only to find he has skipped the country.

It's one thing to do it in dignity and at least explain himself, but to do that Sonny Bill has done is just pathetic.
 

Eels Dude

Coach
Messages
19,065
The bulldogs won't be able to do anything. He will play in France. Why would a french club pay any attention to what an australian court might say?

They can still sue him for breach of contract surely? And Nasser too? And if that's the case then this French club will lose out on the end also.
 

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