{"id":65210,"date":"2025-08-13T13:54:16","date_gmt":"2025-08-13T13:54:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/65210\/"},"modified":"2025-08-13T13:54:16","modified_gmt":"2025-08-13T13:54:16","slug":"nrl-news-2025-tino-faasuamaleaui-contract-perth-bears-offer-gold-coast-titans-des-hasler-future-phil-gould-comments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/65210\/","title":{"rendered":"NRL news 2025 | Tino Fa’asuamaleaui contract, Perth Bears offer; Gold Coast Titans; Des Hasler future; Phil Gould comments"},"content":{"rendered":"

Phil Gould has described the potential for the Perth Bears to throw a five-year $7.5 million deal at Tino Fa’asuamaleaui<\/a> as “ridiculous”, while pledging his belief Des Hasler<\/a> will remain at the Titans.<\/p>\n

Fa’asuamaleaui’s contract has been a big talking point after his manager announced he’ll test the open market.<\/p>\n

Mal Meninga made no secret of his desire to bring the representative front-rower to the new franchise<\/a> and with that has come reports he will become the highest paid prop in the game.<\/p>\n

READ MORE: Bellamy hits back at Cleary over loophole claims<\/a><\/p>\n

READ MORE: Bolters, headaches for Kangaroos as selection gaps open<\/a><\/p>\n

READ MORE: Lockyer ‘excited’ by side effect of Broncos injury crisis<\/a><\/p>\n

Fa’asuamaleaui’s management negotiated a new contract in 2023 after Justin Holbrook was sacked, which tied him down to the Titans for 10 years. But that contract had a get out clause which will make him available to offers from clubs on November 1.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Phil Gould doesn’t believe Tino Fa’asuamaleaui should be paid near $1.5 million a season. \u00a0Getty\/Nine<\/p>\n

On Wide World of Sports’ Six Tackles with Gus<\/a>, Gould was frustrated when discussing the clause.<\/p>\n

“If I ever sat down with a player and a player manager who wanted the option to negotiate their way out of the contract … I’d say don’t bother coming or don’t bother staying, if that’s the way you feel,” he said.<\/p>\n

“We want to make a five-year or ten-year commitment to you, we expect you to make a five or ten-year commitment to us.<\/p>\n

“Having said that, clubs do move players, either for non-performing or salary cap reasons.”<\/p>\n

Watch the 2025 NRL premiership live and free on Nine and 9Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Fa’asuamaleaui and David Fifita’s contracts both had clauses when Holbrook’s time was up and Gould found it “extraordinary” that another was inserted for the prop.<\/p>\n

“They’ve re-signed them to remove the exit clauses and put more back in … it doesn’t make sense to me,” he said.<\/p>\n

As for the Bears’ mooted $7.5m offer, Gould believes it’s “media scuttlebutt”.<\/p>\n

\"Tino<\/p>\n

Tino Faasuamaleaui of the Titans.\u00a0Getty<\/p>\n

The Bulldogs general manager argued no front-rower is worth that sort of money, despite Fa’asuamaleaui being one of the best in the game.<\/p>\n

“He’s a great player. He’s a really great player but the Titans are running last,” he said.<\/p>\n

“If you don’t get the mix right and you don’t get the money right and you don’t get the important people in the important positions, you’re not going to win games.<\/p>\n

“It’s the battle any club has when you’re talking about what’s the value of your player … so if you’re going to pay $1.5 million and your marquee player is going to be a front rower, right? He’s going to be a front rower who doesn’t play 80 minutes every week. You’ve got to pay someone else to play the rest of the game that he’s not going to play.<\/p>\n

“Then who do you put into the positions that actually influence the scoreboard? He’s a great player. He is an outstanding front row forward. But there has to be a limit.<\/p>\n

“If you can’t influence the scoreboard, it doesn’t matter how rough and tough your front-rower is. So I find that ridiculous.”<\/p>\n

Gould also identified the risks that can come for such a big-money deal considering the Maroons prop spent the majority of the 2024 season on the sideline with injury. <\/p>\n

“If that $1.5 million front-rower is out, you’re in trouble. You’re in trouble,” he said.<\/p>\n

“He had all last season off. If you’ve got three or four front-rowers all on $300,000, $400,000, $500,000 each and one of them pulls out, it’s no big deal. You’ve got some depth and you’ve got people there to take their place.”<\/p>\n

Fa’asuamaleaui’s decision to go to market has come from a desire to see a successful vision for the future from the Titans.<\/p>\n

The club is currently last and the speculation has been that Des Hasler won’t continue as coach.<\/p>\n

But there have been green shoots from the Titans in recent weeks, especially after Hasler sprayed the side after a loss<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Gould believes the Manly Sea Eagles premiership winner will continue on. <\/p>\n

“I think he’ll stay at the Gold Coast Titans. My mail is that Des Hasler will survive and he’ll coach there again next year,” he said.<\/p>\n

“I’ll be very, very surprised if he’s not coaching the Titans next year … And I’ll be very surprised if Tino’s not there next year.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Phil Gould has described the potential for the Perth Bears to throw a five-year $7.5 million deal at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":65211,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,761,762,158,85],"class_list":["post-65210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nrl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-national-rugby-league","tag-nationalrugbyleague","tag-nrl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65210","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65210"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65210\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65211"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}