{"id":937254,"date":"2026-10-22T19:42:21","date_gmt":"2026-10-22T19:42:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/937254\/"},"modified":"2026-10-22T19:42:21","modified_gmt":"2026-10-22T19:42:21","slug":"three-clubs-to-fight-for-cooper-bais-signature-immediate-departure-possible","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/937254\/","title":{"rendered":"Three clubs to fight for Cooper Bai’s signature, immediate departure possible"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Melbourne Storm<\/a>, Sydney Roosters<\/a> and PNG Chiefs<\/a> are the three clubs in the mix to land the signing of Cooper Bai<\/a> after his management confirmed to the Gold Coast Titans<\/a> earlier this week that he wouldn’t re-sign.<\/p>\n

Bai was originally locked in with the Titans to the end of 2028, but it was revealed by Zero Tackle shortly after he re-signed that the final year of his deal was a player option.<\/p>\n

That has not changed since, with the PNG representative instantly linked to becoming a foundation player at the Chiefs.<\/p>\n

The lock forward, who has impressed in his NRL<\/a> opportunities with the Titans to date, has already toured facilities in Port Moresby, and it’s understood the new club have put a three-year offer to him worth plenty.<\/p>\n

But the Chiefs won’t have it all their own way.<\/p>\n

The Melbourne Storm<\/a>, who have already come close to signing Bai once before, and the Sydney Roosters<\/a>, are also believed to be in the mix for his signature per News Corp.<\/p>\n

It is even reported that Bai has no interest in returning to the Titans for 2027 pre-season and will have a new club in the coming weeks, although it’s unclear if the Titans have granted him permission to do that.<\/p>\n

The former Queensland under-19 representative would be a major boost for the Chiefs, who are yet to make a singificant dent on their inaugural forward pack despite having seven players locked down.<\/p>\n

The Roosters and Storm are also in the position of needing to pick up forwards for the coming campaigns.<\/p>\n

The Roosters have lost prop Spencer Leniu<\/a> to the Parramatta Eels<\/a>, while the Storm were already short in middle third depth during 2026.<\/p>\n

Bai, who has 24 games under his belt, is the son of Marcus Bai who played 144 games for the Storm during his career.<\/p>\n

It’s understood Cooper wants to sign a long-term deal, which could impact the Chiefs’ chances of landing him if he doesn’t decide to see out 2027 at the Titans.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Melbourne Storm, Sydney Roosters and PNG Chiefs are the three clubs in the mix to land the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":937255,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,761,762,158,85],"class_list":["post-937254","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\/937254","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=937254"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/937254\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/937255"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=937254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=937254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=937254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}