{"id":945010,"date":"2026-10-29T09:46:12","date_gmt":"2026-10-29T09:46:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/945010\/"},"modified":"2026-10-29T09:46:12","modified_gmt":"2026-10-29T09:46:12","slug":"nrl-news-2026-daly-cherry-evans-issue-with-sam-walker-sydney-rooster-contract-drama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/945010\/","title":{"rendered":"NRL news 2026: Daly Cherry-Evans\u2019 issue with Sam Walker Sydney Rooster contract drama"},"content":{"rendered":"

Daly Cherry-Evans<\/a> has an issue with the Sam Walker<\/a> contract saga.<\/p>\n

Not an issue with any of the particularities of the collapsed negotiations, but the commotion the breakdown has caused.<\/p>\n

\"Daly<\/p>\n

Daly Cherry-Evans and Sam Walker at the Roosters.\u00a0Getty<\/p>\n

\u201cLook, we love to dramatise things in sport,\u201d Cherry-Evans, who partnered Walker in the halves in the Roosters<\/a>\u2032 charge to premiership glory this year, said on Nine\u2019s Today on Thursday.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t see these things as any different from people that are just negotiating their terms of work.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut with sport, we seem to have different standards around it, and emotion is attached to it a lot more.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the end of the day, he\u2019s just doing a business negotiation. I\u2019m sure at the end of the day it will all be fine.\u201d<\/p>\n

Billionaire Roosters chairman Nick Politis<\/a> pulled the club\u2019s contract offer for Walker on Monday night<\/a>, after negotiations between the premiership-winning halfback\u2019s management and the Tricolours that day failed to culminate in a deal.<\/p>\n

The NRL<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

The 24-year-old would have become the richest player in Roosters history if he had signed on the dotted line.<\/p>\n

Nine\u2019s Danny Weidler reported<\/a> that Walker and his management met at 9.30am on Monday. They agreed to the deal and the Roosters were informed.<\/p>\n

The club\u2019s 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\u2019s management.<\/p>\n

At 6.55pm on Monday, his management requested an extra $100,000 a year and a new deadline of 12.30pm Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Incensed, Politis pulled the deal.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m pretty firm on this,\u201d Cherry-Evans added.<\/p>\n

\u201cI get sport; it\u2019s so emotional to us, and that\u2019s what makes it so special.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut at the end of the day, the club and Sam are doing what is best for themselves, and that\u2019s all it is, really.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Daly Cherry-Evans has an issue with the Sam Walker contract saga. Not an issue with any of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":945011,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-945010","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/945010","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=945010"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/945010\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/945011"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=945010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=945010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=945010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}