DCE’s ‘pretty firm’ issue with Walker contract drama
Daly Cherry-Evans has an issue with the Sam Walker contract saga.
Not an issue with any of the particularities of the collapsed negotiations, but the commotion the breakdown has caused.
Daly Cherry-Evans and Sam Walker at the Roosters. Getty
“Look, we love to dramatise things in sport,” Cherry-Evans, who partnered Walker in the halves in the Roosters′ charge to premiership glory this year, said on Nine’s Today on Thursday.
“I don’t see these things as any different from people that are just negotiating their terms of work.
“But with sport, we seem to have different standards around it, and emotion is attached to it a lot more.
“At the end of the day, he’s just doing a business negotiation. I’m sure at the end of the day it will all be fine.”
Billionaire Roosters chairman Nick Politis pulled the club’s contract offer for Walker on Monday night, after negotiations between the premiership-winning halfback’s management and the Tricolours that day failed to culminate in a deal.
The NRL premiers tabled a four-year contract worth $1.2 million a season for Walker, including a ratchet clause, which potentially would have seen his salary soar above $1.4 million in line with the next collective bargaining agreement.
The 24-year-old would have become the richest player in Roosters history if he had signed on the dotted line.
Nine’s Danny Weidler reported that Walker and his management met at 9.30am on Monday. They agreed to the deal and the Roosters were informed.
The club’s media manager was told to draft a press release trumpeting the re-signing, and it was ready to be published at 3pm on Monday, pending final approval from the gun halfback’s management.
At 6.55pm on Monday, his management requested an extra $100,000 a year and a new deadline of 12.30pm Tuesday.
Incensed, Politis pulled the deal.
“I’m pretty firm on this,” Cherry-Evans added.
“I get sport; it’s so emotional to us, and that’s what makes it so special.
“But at the end of the day, the club and Sam are doing what is best for themselves, and that’s all it is, really.”
Walker is contracted to the Bondi club until the end of 2027 but so ugly is the situation that there are doubts if he will see out his deal.
