Sydney Roosters keen to lure golden son Sonny Bill Williams back to NRL

It's hard to say no to Roosters chairman Nick Politis, and when the Roosters make one final play for Sonny Bill Williams, the club will be banking on their friendship to make a difference.

Politis, Willliams, his agent Khoder Nasser and former Roosters director David Gyngell are good friends and catch up when Williams is in town. There is a meeting planned in the next month.

Not again: Semi Radradra can't be let back into the NRL like Sonny Bill Williams was. Photo: Getty Images

But being the successful businessman he is, Politis knows he is going to need to come up with a plan to lure Williams back to the NRL. As it stands right now the Roosters have been told that it's too difficult for Williams to rejoin the club and they should move on.

But the Roosters won't wear that. The focus and discipline in the group was never better than when Williams was at the club. Not to mention he was a key figure in their 2013 grand final win.

That's why the Roosters are hatching a plan. They know that Williams loves living in Sydney and has family here - that is an attraction.

But central to it will be a job with the Roosters post-football. The club can't match the kind of money - the equivalent of around $3 million sign-on, that he is being offered per year in Europe.

The All Blacks will also have a greater ability to entice Williams. But a job later in life is what the Roosters can look at. There is a commonly held view that post-football jobs are are a way of rorting the cap.

The NRL's overriding principle is that they monitor any agreement/contract which could be a way of getting around the salary cap. But they also encourage clubs to set up players for a career after their playing days are over.

If a club came to the NRL proposing a contract which included ambassadorial work after someone's playing career, they would first ensure that the payments were all in line with their assessment.

So the payment would have to be high enough during the playing years, and the ambassadorial salary would have to be in line with market rates. The NRL know those rates because we have about 40 ambassadors.

But if the club didn't tell the NRL and just hired the player after he quit, they can still go back later and determine if there was an attempt to breach the salary cap while he was playing.

John Morris was a good example of this: the Sharks set him up to be a coach and then paid him a fair amount once he finished his career.

Williams won't make his final call until his commitments are finished with the New Zealand Sevens team at the Olympics.

Happy ending: Brenton Lawrence and Casey Devin. Photo: Supplied

Diamond detector a gem in sand calamity

Manly prop Brenton Lawrence has had to deal with a lot in recent times, such as a back injury that threatened his career and forced him to learn to walk again.

But the trauma he faced last weekend put that in the shade. His fiancee Casey Devin sets the scene. "We were having a lovely little quiet Saturday night and decided to get ice-cream down at the beach in Dee Why," she said.

"We sat on the stairs, watching the waves – it was delightful. Then disaster struck. As we were leaving, I pulled my hand out of my jean pocket and felt my engagement ring fly off. I immediately knew what had happened and told Beej [Brenton]. It was around 8pm so it was dark, and we only had his iPhone light to search around.

"He was a typical bloke, pretty cool, calm and collected. Meanwhile, I was hysterical. He thought I may have forgotten it at home, so made me drive home to check. I knew it wasn't going to be there, but I did it anyway. Sure enough, it wasn't there.

"I stopped in at Coles on the way back to the beach and bought $100 worth of torches! By about 11pm, I was a wreck ... it sunk in that we may not be able to find it. We had searched all around the stairs and it wasn't there. The only place it could be is buried in the sand.

"In my head, I was picturing having to camp out at the beach overnight until the sun comes up. Then, out of absolute nowhere, a man comes walking along the beach with not one but two metal detectors.

"I was too distraught to speak to him, so pointed him in Brenton's direction. Long story short, he offered to help us. His name was Craig, he is from Wollongong and by chance was on the northern beaches after dropping his wife at a Shannon Noll concert.

"He started looking around but the steel reinforcement in the concrete stairs was setting off the detectors. So Craig started kicking all the sand away from the stairs. All that time, Beej and I had been doing an emu parade along the ground barefoot so we didn't mess the scene of the crime up too much.

"He started putting the small detector in the sand that he'd kicked around and it started going beep, beep, beep. The rest happened in slow motion, like we were in a movie. He reached down and all of a sudden we saw this diamond start flickering in his hand. I collapsed on the ground unable to talk, BJ was in shock. I ran over to Craig and just hugged him for about five minutes.

"It was just all surreal, I was so scared it was gone forever. Beej was an absolute legend, kept his calm throughout. We sat on the beach for a little while to just calm down. We are booked in to get it resized next week!"

Jumper lead

Mal Meninga is all about putting tradition back into the Kangaroos and he doesn't care if it comes at a price. As it stands the Kangaroos don't wear a sponsor on the their jumpers after previously having Holden as their main backer. Meninga isn't concerned in the slightest. "Yeah, we are a cleanskin jumper at the moment," he said. "And ...I don't mind that at all. I think the national jumper is something of significance and not having a sponsor is not a terrible thing at all. We are trying to re-establish the importance of this jumper."

And that's the discussion he had with Paul Gallen when they met up at the True Blues dinner. "He [Meninga] wants players to put the same emphasis if not more on the Test jumper compared to Origin," Gallen said."

Bowing out: Craig Wing. Photo: Craig Golding

Farewell, Wing

After an amazing 18-year career Craig Wing has finally called it quits. "... I'm more and more comfortable with the fact that I'm not playing any more," he said "I didn't quite get to where Beaver (Steve Menzies) was – he got to 40, but I'm 36 and I just think that it's the right time.

"I was lucky enough to go out on top in league with Origin and in rugby I got to play a World Cup. I've been lucky because my last game was in January I've had a 'soft' retirement and its allowed me to adjust. I know how tough so many people have done it quitting.

"I've been lucky I've been out of the country. Being anonymous and out of the spotlight in Japan was tough to start with but then I grew to love it and embrace it. I'll take the next 12 months to work out what I want to do. I'm relaxed and not in a rush."

Slater motivated

Billy Slater is in a good place and more determined than ever to make it back on the field. Until now he has been limited in what he's been able to do. He gets out of a sling this week and the Storm recovery staff will get their hands on him. Along the way he's been offered all kinds of alternative treatments.

Oman deal inked

Here is a sponsorship that all NRL clubs should be envious of. Dragons fan and businessman Michael Ibrahim has managed to secure the country of Oman as a backer for his sons team, Penshurst RSL, to the tune of $40,000. We know it's not huge bucks on the professional scale but it's a very big whack for a local team. Ibrahim explained in an email. "I have been based in the Middle East for the past 15 years, working on many projects with the royal families in Dubai and Abu Dhabi.

"Throughout out my working relationship with delegates in the government at Oman. I explained the concept of rugby league in Australia, and showed them footage of our great game and they fell in love with it right away. I explained to them that I would love to have their great country to be as a sponsor and with no hesitation they jumped on board with my surprise with a cheque to help out our juniors.

"That brought me to think, with all due respect, why isn't the National Rugby League trying to target countries such as Oman, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Qatar and other countries in that region that have unlimited access to funds and access to major sponsors to be targeted and be introduced to the game over there?

"It took a small businessman like myself to ask the question and I got the result. With the right management team at the NRL headquarters I really can't see why they cannot attract such sponsors as Emirates, Eithad, Air Oman, Qatar Air ... that's just to name a few. There is a very big Arabic community and others that use these airlines in the Sydney region and other cities on a daily basis."

The slap: Nathan Brown gives Trent Barrett a touch-up.

Slap in the middle

There is little doubt there is underlying tension between Nathan Brown and Trent Barrett all those years on from "The Slap". It was Brown's edict prior to a media conference that said it all. "She's off," he threatened if there were any questions about Barrett. Lance Thompson, who was poked by Brown, said, "No one deserves to be belittled on the sideline. I felt for Trent because he was captain." Barrett appeared on Sterlo and spoke at length.

He didn't field a question about the slap. You can only imagine that there was some kind of instruction from the Sea Eagles not to go there. Brown did speak at length to the Nine Network. "It doesn't haunt me, but I get asked about it every week," he said. "When I see Trent I say hello. We talk about old times, but we don't really talk about it. It's something that happened. I'd been coaching for six weeks. I've now been coached over 350 games, been to Old Trafford, I've been to another planet. There is no way in the world that you can justify what was done, we can make all the excuses that we like. But there is no justifying that."

Danny Weidler is a Nine reporter.