The Wests Tigers are taking a fairly odd – if genius, if it pays off – approach to trying to re-sign fullback Jahream Bula, tabling two slightly different contract extensions for the young number one to see if he’d like one or the other more.
Bula and his management are now mulling over two options, where signing either would keep him playing at the joint venture as their rearguard star for at least the next three NRL seasons, to 2029.
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The first of the two options, the Sydney Morning Herald has reported, is a two-year deal (hence why he’d be staying until 2028 at the earliest), while the second runs through to 2031 and carries a little less coin. This Sporting Base writer has heard the bigger of the two would clock in just under seven figures, meaning Bula would be getting a decent pay rise.
Right now, Bula also has a mutual option with the Tigers for 2027. Should Wests activate the clause, the youngster would earn $900,000 through the 2027 season. Should they turn it down and he take it up, that would drop to $800,000.
In offering these proper extensions over the clauses, Wests’ powerbrokers are hoping to keep Bula longer.
It would also go some way to keeping him away from their Sydney rivals; Canterbury has been very eager to sign the young gun to play fullback for the foreseeable future, as has Shane Flanagan and the St George Illawarra Dragons.
The latter of those have already held informal conversations with Bula, taking their chance amid the recent Tigers civil war that saw the Holman Barnes Group clear out several directors and favoured CEO Shane Richardson quit in response. Bula had been about to re-sign before the whole incident, and instead took the time over the holidays to meet the Dragons and others.
All this comes after Bula reportedly admitted to Zero Tackle he “wants to stay” at the Tigers.
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At this stage, the Tigers are quietly confident that Bula will now stay at Concord, despite heavy Bulldogs and Dragons interest. With the two different contract lengths — that had been the main sticking point for Bula in talks — now on the table, too, one of the only issues that had stuck in the way should now have been dealt with in negotiations.
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Bula, who just recently turned 24 ahead of the NRL preseason, has already scored 23 tries in 57 games for the Tigers since his debut in 2023. He’s a mainstay in the Fijian international team, too, with five tries in six games.
Elsewhere, Jack Bird has been granted an immediate release from the Tigers to join Leeds in England.
