The Wallabies could be delivered the ultimate golden goose if Payne Haas accepts a $3m per season offer to play rugby with R360.
The NRL superstar is reportedly weighing up that mammoth offer while on his end-of-season holiday with family in Fiji.
The rebel rugby competition is hoping to kick off next year and administrators in both codes are watching on with close interest.
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Payne Haas of the Broncos. Getty
“Payne Haas, he’s just a genetic freak,” dual code star Mat Rogers told Wide World of Sports.
“He’s so big, strong and fast, I mean you can throw him into any contact sport and he can succeed… you put Payne Haas on the side of a scrum or at lock, he’s just devastating in terms of a ball carrier.
“That’s a guy that can do some damage, but he’s got great footwork and he’s got great awareness with the ball, he can offload, he can do it all. He’d be devastating in rugby.”
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Mat Rogers on Rugby Heaven. Stan
Australia is hosting the Rugby World Cup in 2027.
Haas played league for the Kangaroos before switching allegiances to Samoa.
But Rugby Australia would have to change their tune if Haas were to ever don a Wallabies jersey.
NEW PODCAST! Nick Stiles offers insight into R360, the direction of the Australian game and the development of Carter Gordon
RA last month joined other major nations in telling players that signing with R360 would make them ineligible for international selection.
“The extraordinary money that’s being offered… there is some potential real upside if you’ve got a couple of these really excellent league players playing rugby union,” The Sydney Morning Herald journalist Iain Payten said on Stan Sport’s Inside Line.
“Payne Haas playing rugby union for Australia? Yeah, thanks very much, we’ll have that. Unless he played for Samoa…
Payne Haas of Samoa is tackled at CommBank Stadium. Getty
“I think the general view of some of the top execs in rugby is if there are people prepared to invest money in rugby, let’s get all over them.
“This is great. How do we talk to these blokes? How do we make this work?”
Payten joined Michael Atkinson, Justin Harrison and Nick Stiles for an in-depth discussion on both the opportunities and threats that R360 presented to rugby’s establishment.
Nick Stiles at GIO Stadium. Getty
Stiles, the former general manager of the Melbourne Rebels, believed there was a “fair chance” that R360 got off the ground as planned in 2026.
“The one thing I’ll tell you from my time doing contracting is that time kills deals,” he said.
“That’s the concern for me at the moment. They’ve been speculating that October was going to be a really key date. That’s when you saw (Ryan) Papenhuyzen announce he’s leaving the Storm.
Ryan Papenhuyzen and Sualauvi Faalogo. Getty
“You thought, ‘Oh, well, there’s the date for R360. He’s going to announce next day’. Nothing happened. From what we hear, that’s been pushed back a bit. That’s always a concern.”
Stiles is also a former Queensland Reds coach who played 12 Tests as a prop for the Wallabies.
He hoped R360 could find a space in the global rugby ecosystem.
“I think you’d be crazy not to embrace it and not to look at it seriously because I believe the international game’s thriving,” Stiles said.
“But I believe at domestic level – so Super Rugby level, club level – that the game’s actually struggling in a lot of places around the world. Not just Australia, so why not look at a different competition like R360 that could fill a void in that space.
“It still generates revenue for the game, keeps our best players getting paid well and trying something different.”
Fans of Kimberly Birrell of Australia cheer at Melbourne Park. Getty
R360 is looking to follow the lead of Formula 1, the IPL and grand slam tennis in mixing elite sport with elite entertainment.
“You’ve only got to look at the AO (Australian Open),” Stiles said.
“They make the AO something that’s not even about the tennis. You’ve got the concerts. You’ve got the Saturday where the fans and the 20-year-olds turn up and go into the bars and don’t watch a single tennis ball being hit. They’re really nailing, I believe, that conceptual piece around creating an event that’s not just the rugby.”