Louis has sights set on Kansas gold rush

THE latest phase of his footballing reincarnation took Louis Rees-Zammit to a school run by an American superstar whose contract runs from seven figures into nine.

- PETER JACKSON

There are big deals to be found all

over the National Football League and then there is the one Patrick Mahomes signed for the Kansas City Chiefs: $503,000,000 over ten years which crunches into more than a few cents north of £400,000,000.

The numbers, as confirmed by those at Forbes who base their global reputation on this sort of thing, give some idea of the company the Welsh flyer is keeping on a crusade from The Shed at Kingsholm guaranteed to earn him shed loads more in Missouri.

Rees-Zammit’s three-year deal as a member of the Chiefs’ practice squad is worth $2.85m or £2.28m, loose change compared to what the same employer pays Mahomes but positively gigantic when compared to salaries in Rugby Union.

In one context, the former Gloucester wing’s pay, more than trebling his annual earnings in the Premiership, represents another big deal for someone who has never played a competitive game of gridiron in his life. If the Super Bowl champions think he’s already that good, the sky’s the limit as to what he can achieve.

The off-season camp hosted by Mahomes in his native Texas gave the Chiefs’ on-field commander-in-chief an opportunity to put Rees-Zammit and the other new wide receivers through their paces. That meant plucking Mahomes’ missiles out of the sky at full throttle.

The Chiefs’ ringmaster, nicknamed ‘Showtime’ from childhood by his father, a former baseball pitcher, is renowning for fizzing passes over distances of up to 80 yards. Not for nothing do the cognoscenti refer to the rocketry in his right arm and the left arm isn’t bad either.